


Good Bones

by LemonadeGarden



Category: Batman (Comics)
Genre: Batfamily Feels, Bruce Wayne is a Good Parent, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Shorts, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-02
Updated: 2019-06-17
Packaged: 2019-08-14 17:09:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 29,394
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16496750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LemonadeGarden/pseuds/LemonadeGarden
Summary: Shorter stories and prompts from my Tumblr.





	1. A Bedtime Story

**Author's Note:**

> Title is based off of [ this poem ](https://m.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/good-bones).  
> A short note: I'm cross-posting all my Tumblr shorts on here so I know they're all organized and in one place. However, a lot of these were written a long time ago, and I consider myself to be a better writer now, as I'm sure will be the case in future years, when I read things I'm excitedly writing now and cringe my heart out. Other works are more recent. So forgive the inconsistency in quality of these shorts.  
> I'll be posting one chapter everyday until I've exhausted my stockpile. Enjoy!

 

Helena tucked her legs in under herself, pressing her body against the wooden back of the cupboard in an effort to make herself as small as possible. She breathed through her mouth, trying to be quiet, like Damian had taught her.  

“Stealth,” he'd said solemnly to her one day, “stealth, will always be your greatest strength. You can't be Batman's daughter and not master the darkness.”

She was swathed in that same darkness now; the cupboard door was shut. They would never think she was in there.  

Footsteps. Someone walking into the room. She tensed, then relaxed. It was important to stay calm. Calm and quiet. 

“Helena,” said a voice, “I know you're in there.”

The footsteps drew still closer. 

She had barely been able to escape from Their clutches, downstairs. If They found her now–

If They found her, something unthinkable was going to happen. 

She was going to have to go to  _ bed.  _

The cupboard door swung open, and Dad frowned down at her.  

“Lena,” he said, “I am very disappointed in you.”

Helena pouted. She crossed her arms and tried to look disappointed right back. This was hard to do, on account of the fact that she was only seven years old.

“Don't wanna sleep,” She said, and Dad sighed, and scooped her up.  

He grunted a little over-dramatically when he did, which was something he did  _ every _ time. “You're getting too big for me to pick you up. And too big to avoid bedtime.”

“I'm too big  _ for _ a bedtime,” Helena said. “Damian sleeps whenever he wants to!”

“Damian is twenty years old, Lena,” Dad said. He sounded kind of exasperated.

She scrunched up her nose. “I hate being the baby,” she said. 

“That's what Damian used to say,” Dad said. He closed the cupboard door behind her.  

She put her head on Dad’s shoulder. It was comfy, and he always smelled like nice shower gel. She never got to use his, though. Only dumb green apple.

Green apple shower gel was for  _ babies.  _

“Well I'm  _ not _ a baby anymore.” She said. “I'm a  _ lady. _ Alfred said so. It means I have to put my plate in the dishwasher, and make my bed. So it should mean that I get to pick my bedtime too.”

“Really?” Dad said, hiking her up a little in his arms as they walked out of the empty guest room and upstairs, to her room, “because the last time  _ I _ checked, young ladies do not scratch their brothers on the face.”

Helena pouted again. “I didn't mean to!” She said. 

“And yet it happened.” Dad said, dryly. 

Helena burrowed her face in Dad's t-shirt. “I really didn't wanna go to bed. And then–”

“The situation got out of hand?” Dad said.  

Helena nodded against his shoulder. “Is he mad at me?”

“Damian?” Dad said. Then he smiled. “No. He was a lot like you when he was younger. So I'd say he's lost the right to be short with particularly bothersome children.”

“Hey!” Helena said, and Dad laughed.  

“Come on,” he said, “I'll tell you a story before bed. Or are you too old for those too?”

Helena shook her head. They'd reached her room, and he set her down with another dramatic grunt. 

“Go brush your teeth,” He said,  surveying her bed, which was full of toys and clothes. “And what did Alfred tell you about cleaning your room?”

“It just gets dirty again,” Helena shrugged. She went to the bathroom to brush and pee, and when she came out in her pajamas, the bed was clean. 

Dad was looking at her disapprovingly, and holding a candy bar wrapper. Twix. She squirmed guiltily. Shoot. 

“Lena, you can't eat these in bed,” Dad said. “Or anywhere. They’ll rot your teeth.”

Helena shrugged. Seemed worth it, really. 

“Who gave you the candy?”

A pause. Helena considered her options. Alfred would never give her candy,  and she couldn't say Mom, like she usually did. Mom wasn't in Gotham. She was going to come back only tomorrow morning. 

Dad never got mad at Mom. 

“No one.” she settled on, finally. 

Dad gave her a look. “Was it Damian?”

“Nuh uh,”

“It was, wasn't it?”

Helena shrugged. She was good at stealth. Not lying. Still had to master that one.

Dad shook his head. “No more candy.” he said. 

“Not even on Halloween?”

“Only on Halloween.”

“And Easter.”

“And Easter.”

“And my birthday.”

“And your birthday, Lena.”

“And Damian’s birthday.”

Dad sighed. “Yes. And Dick's and Jason's and Tim's and Cass’s and Alfred's and mine and your mother's. Happy?”

“And on Christmas.”

“Alright, that's it,” Dad said, and he scooped her up again and threw her on the bed and started to tickle her sides, which was really unfair, because she'd made him  _ promise _ he wouldn't do that everytime he wanted to annoy her. 

“Daddy!” She shrieked, giggling, “stop it!”

“Or you'll do what?” he said, laughing as he held her in place, “Kick me?”

“I'll try!” she said, hotly. Then she tried. Pretty hard. 

Dad went “oof”, but he didn't stop tickling her. 

“Stop it!” She yelled again, “you're being mean!”

“Am not,” Dad said, grinning, but he stopped tickling her. 

“Are too,” she sniffed. “You were supposed to tell me a story.”

“I did promise,” Dad said. He pulled the duvet on top of her,  and then sat next to her, on the covers. 

“What kind do you want to hear?” He said. 

“Can you tell me the one with you and Mom?” she said. 

Dad smiled. “Which one?” he said. 

“The one where you went to the amusement park for a date and then the Riddler showed up and you had to fight him with your cool bat weapons and Mom with her claws and then you tied him up to the carousel and switched it on and you shared a milkshake and watched him go round and round until it was dark.”

“That is an absolutely made up story,” Dad said, sounding astonished, “who told you that one?”

Helena grinned. “Dick,” She said. 

“Well, Dick was lying. No such thing happened.” 

“No milkshakes?”

“Absolutely none.”

Helena was about to point out how lame that sounded, but then she heard the door open. 

“I heard shouting,” Mom said, smiling. “Is someone being tickled to death here?”

“Mom!” Helena jumped out of bed, and then ran to her mother. Mom bent down to hug her. She couldn't pick her up like Dad anymore. Well. At least there wasn't any dramatic groaning. 

“Hi sweetheart,” Mom murmured. She was running her hands through Helena’s hair, “I missed you.” 

“Me too,” Helena said, “Damian bought me a candy bar yesterday at Target and I took Titus for a walk on Monday and he got all muddy and he made me all muddy and then Alfred got cross and Jason and Drew and I went to the zoo today morning but Drew got a stomach ache so we went back to their house and Jason let me have three gummy bears and some soda and I didn't want to sleep right now so I tried to hide in a closet downstairs but Dad found me and then he found the candy bar wrapper and then he tickled me. You have to yell at him.”

“Wow,” Mom said. She was smiling, “it’s been a whirlwind of a week for you.”

“A real rollercoaster ride,” Dad said, coming up to them. “Hi,” he said to Mom. Mom stood back up and went over to Dad, and put her arms around him and kissed him. 

“Hi,” she said. “I got done with things early. Found a connecting flight from Amsterdam, somehow.”

“Lena’s not the only one that missed you,” Dad murmured. He was stroking her back, like he did to Helena sometimes, when she had scary dreams at night. 

Mom smiled. “Is that so.” She kissed him again, her hand on his jaw. 

Helena sighed. “You were supposed to  _ yell _ at him.”

She knew first hand that Mom was a good yeller. This was  _ not _ yelling. 

“Come here, Lena,” Mom said, sitting on the bed and patting the space next to her. “I'll make sure he doesn't tickle you again.”

Helena trudged over to the bed. “I don't want to go to bed. You're here now, so let's go  _ play _ .” 

“Don't whine,” Mom said, “it's not helping your case.”

Helena flopped down on the bed next to her. “It's not  _ fair _ . How come you and Dad and Damian and Alfred and  _ everyone _ get to sleep in the middle of the night, and I have to be in bed?”

“Well,” Mom said, “we have very important work to do.”

“I do too!”

“Really?” Dad said. “What work?” He sat down on Lena's other side. She was in the middle, tucked into a little nook between her parents. It was warm and smelled like Dad’s shower gel and the jasmine perfume Mom always wore, and also a little bit like Green apple soap. 

She pouted. 

“Lots of work. I have to walk Titus. And make my bed. And put my plates on the dishwasher. I'm a  _ lady _ now.”

Dad snorted. “I’m pretty sure Titus walks  _ you _ .”

“Bruce,” Mom said. She was shaking her head. 

Helena scowled. “I walk  _ him _ . I hold his leash and everything.”

“He decides where you two go, sweetheart,” Dad said. 

“That's because I'm letting him decide!” 

Dad grinned, and ruffled Helena’s hair. “Why don't you tell us the rest of the story. The one with the carousel and Riddler and the milkshake?”

Helena crossed her arms. “No,” she said, half-heartedly. 

Mom was giving Dad a look. “Riddler and. . .milkshakes?”

“Dick told her a slightly abridged version of that time Riddler tried to kidnap you.” Dad said. Helena didn't know what abridged meant. She hoped it meant awesome. 

“Really,” Mom sounded amused. “Go on, then. Let's hear it.”

Helena screwed up her face in concentration. “Well, you bought mom some cotton candy, and then you went on the carousel, and Mom sat on the white horse and you sat on the unicorn and you were singing songs and having fun and you turned around and the Riddler was on the black horse, and so you punched him and Mom clawed the question mark off his hat and then you took some rope and you tied him with it to the horse and then you watched him go round and round and you split a chocolate chip milkshake and some more cotton candy and went home.”

A pause. Both her parents were quiet. It was something akin to a stunned silence. 

“Dick is something else,” Mom said, finally, “I  _ hate _ cotton candy.”

Dad snorted. Helena looked at him. 

“So that's not what happened?”

“No, I'm afraid not, Lena.”

“So what did happen?” Helena asked, curious. A story without any milkshakes didn't sound like any fun. 

“Well,” Mom said, “there was an amusement park, and I suppose there was a carousel too. But no one was on it. And I was the one tied up.” 

“And then?” Helena said, settling in between both her parents, under the covers. Dad had an arm around Mom, still. And he was stroking Helena's hair. Mom's smile was warm. Helena grinned. Maybe this meant they'd forgotten about the candy bar and the face-scratching. She took a deep breath in. 

Men's shower gel and Jasmine perfume and Green Apple flavor soap. And the most exciting stories. Always.

“And then your father came to save the day,  which was completely dumb because he fell right into Riddler’s trap, and I didn't need any help anyway. . . “

Helena closed her eyes. Not to go to sleep, because she wasn't tired. Well. Maybe a little tired. But mostly because her Mom’s voice was a warm light that shone over her, and her Dad's arms were strong and safe.  

She was content with just being here, listening to her parents tell stories. 

But tomorrow, she'd find a better hiding place. 

  
  



	2. Seventeen

Bruce was seventeen when he got expelled from school. Not suspended, or asked to take a few days off, like he usually was. Even when he fucked up the headmasters and Deans always remembered that he was Thomas and Martha Wayne's son. His parents knew people. His parents had influence. Most importantly, his parents were  _ liked _ , even though he was not. Still, he'd gone to three schools in the last four years, being shuffled from one to another in increasing acts of desperation. Alfred thought he hadn't found the right ‘fit’ yet.  Bruce knew there was no right fit. 

The boarding school he'd been going to lately was stricter. More prestigious. No amount of influence or money could get them to keep Bruce in for another year, especially after what Bruce did to that poor boy. That poor boy.  

That's all Bruce fucking heard after it happened, all fucking day.  Wherever he went, people looked at him, spoke to each other in hushed whispers. Pointed at him. Did you hear what he did to that poor boy? He walked passed them. Freak, someone would say. He would put his headphones on. 

Harvey was his only friend in school. Harvey, with his neat haircut and perfectly pressed uniform. He always did it himself. Pressed his own school shirt. Most of the boys, Bruce included, used a paid laundry service.  Harvey’s family didn't have that kind of money. Bruce had walked in on him once in his dorm, bent over an ironing board, wearing an undershirt and boxers, and ironing his own clothes. He'd looked up when he’d seen Bruce, flushing hard and folding away the board. Almost like he was embarrassed that Bruce had seen that. 

Small things. Harvey cut his own hair. Usually he did a pretty shitty job. He didn't style it, like all their classmates. No gel. It was always a shade too short. Bruce dragged him to a barbershop one time just before the summer vacation started, to get a real haircut. Twenty eight dollars.

“On me,” Bruce had said. 

Harvey had come back to school after their break with a crew cut. 

“Dad made me get it,” Harvey said, when he saw Bruce staring. He looked down. “He said I shouldn't take handouts.”

Bruce had shrugged.  

Harvey also had a job. No other students did. He'd come here on scholarship, and on weekends he washed cars down at the gas station near the Burger King. The Dean had allowed him to do it, after his dad sent him a letter.  

When it happened, it was a Sunday. 

Bruce was sitting on one of the benches by the gas pump with Harvey, who was taking a break. They were having mint and berry slushies, from the gas station. The owner, Rudy, a large middle-aged man with a ponytail always gave the two of them free slushies during Harvey’s break. He was pretty cool. 

“Al’s been getting on my nerves,” Bruce said.  

Harvey slurped noisily through his straw. It was nearly November now, and his crew cut had finally grown out a little. 

“What happened?” he asked.  

“He wants me to come home for thanksgiving. Have a big dinner with some cousins from Maine, or something. I don't know.”

“You know how much I'd kill to have thanksgiving at your place, dumbass? I bet you guys have like, eight course meals and creme brulee and the biggest turkey ever.” Harvey looked kind of dreamy about the whole affair. 

Bruce shrugged, kicking a loose piece of gravel with his shoe. “It's okay. Nothing special.”

Harvey snorted. “Right,” he said. “My folks give me a turkey sandwich and some ice cream and call it a day.”

Bruce shrugged again. “We could switch places.”

Harvey laughed. “Yeah, sure.” he said. 

“I'm serious.”

Harvey shook his head. “Why on earth would you want that?” he said. “I don't get you sometimes, Bruce.”

Bruce slurped on his slushie. “It's dumb to have thanksgiving if your parents aren't there.”

They sat in silence for a while. 

“I'm sorry, Bruce,” Harvey said. He was looking at him with an odd expression on his face. It could almost be called pity.  

“It's whatever. It doesn't bother me anymore,” Bruce lied. You knew you were really pathetic when a boy with a crew cut felt bad for you. 

“Okay,” Harvey said. 

“Hey,” Bruce said, “what if you come to my place for Thanksgiving? I won't be so bored, and you can eat creme brulee. I'll ask Alfred to make some.”

Harvey looked doubtful. “I don't know if Dad's gonna let me,” he said. 

A car drove in, and Harvey stood back up, handing Bruce the empty slurpie cup. “Break’s over,” he said, grabbing his hose and sponge from under the bench. Then he stopped, looking at the car.  

It was Glenn Aldridge’s car. He was a day boarder, and he had the swankiest goddamn car from here to Coast city. A ‘97 Corvette. Custom wheels and interiors. Cherry red. The colour of the pure, pure envy. 

Out of all the kids in school, he'd made the most fun of Harvey's crew cut. And his job. 

Harvey sighed. 

“You don't have to do it,” Bruce said. 

“Yeah, right,” Harvey said. “Rudy's going to kill me if I don't.”

The window of the Corvette rolled down. “Hey,  Dent,” Aldridge yelled, “you gonna wipe the bird shit off my car or what?”

Someone was in the car with him. A girl. She giggled. 

Harvey sighed again. He went over to the car and started to wipe it down. 

“That's what I thought,” Aldridge said. He was one of those loud fucking guys. Those idiots that never shut up. “I was just telling Mona what a freak you are. How your Dad made you pay Wayne back for your haircut,” Aldridge said. He laughed. He had this awful braying laugh. 

Harvey's knuckles were white around the hose. He was quiet.  

“Jesus, you really need this job, don't you?” Aldridge said. He was leaning out of the window now, watching Harvey clean the car. “You won't even say a fucking thing.”

“Shut up, Aldridge,” Bruce said, from over where he was sitting on the bench. 

“Leave it, Bruce,” Harvey said quietly. 

“Yeah, Bruce, leave it,” Aldridge said, mockingly. “What is it with the two of you anyway? No one else to make friends with, huh?”

Harvey didn't say anything. He was still wiping down the car. Bruce couldn't understand why he didn't just stop. 

“I guess losers stick together.”

Harvey looked up. 

“Maybe,” he said softly, “you should fuck off, Glenn.”

Aldridge grinned. “I'm impressed, Dent. You just grew a spine. Your boyfriend didn't have to help you out for once, huh? Now excuse me while I go tell your employer that you're cursing at your customers.” He got out of his car, shutting the door behind him. 

Harvey was looking pale. Bruce knew that if he lost this job his dad was going to kill him. 

“Get back in the car, Aldridge,” Bruce said. 

Aldridge grinned. He was clearly enjoying himself. “Or you'll do what, Wayne?”

“Get back in the car and drive away.”

“No, seriously, what  _ are _ you going to do? Go crying to your mommy and daddy? Oh wait, you–” 

He couldn't finish the rest of the sentence, because Bruce slammed him against the side of the car, one hand clutched around the collar of his stupid fucking prep school polo shirt. Aldridge’s face lost all colour. 

“You deserve this,” Bruce said, and then he punched him in the face.  And then he did it again, because it felt so good. Strangely good. It made his mind go blank, and he didn't have to think about what an asshole Aldridge was, and how awful Harvey's dad was, and how awful Thanksgiving was, and how awful his parents were for leaving him alone and how much he fucking hated everything and everyone. It made him think of nothing at all. So he did it again. And again. His hand was starting to come back bloody now. Aldridge wasn't moving anymore. 

Someone was screaming. Presumably the girl inside the car. 

“Jesus fucking– Bruce!” Harvey was yelling, trying to hold him back. Bruce didn't want to be held back. He wanted never to stop. He wanted to  _ go _ . 

Another pair of hands, and he was shoved violently off of Aldridge, who slumped to the ground, sitting on the floor, his back against his car. Not so cherry red anymore. It was darker. Deeper, tinged with fear. 

“What the hell’s going on?” Rudy said, his eyes wide.

Bruce was silent, his chest heaving. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and tasted salt. He stared dead straight at Aldridge, blood in his mouth. 

Aldridge was starting to cry.  

“Jesus,” Harvey said, running a hand through his hair. “Jesus.” He walked over to the other end of the car, opened the door. The girl screamed again.

“Help me get him into the backseat,” Harvey said, once she'd shut up. “We have to take him to the hospital.”

The girl swallowed. She walked slowly out of the car, staring warily at Bruce, and helped Aldridge up. 

Bruce stood up too, and both of them flinched.  

“Stay where you are,” Rudy said, “or I'll call the cops.”

Bruce looked at Harvey. “I'll drive him.” he said. Harvey was terrible at driving. He hadn't wanted his dad to teach him, so Bruce had been teaching him, the last few months. 

Harvey just shook his head. “You've done enough,” he said. He turned to the girl. “Mona, right? You know the way to St. Luke's?”

Mona nodded shakily. 

“Harvey–” Bruce started to say. 

Harvey whirled around. “You know what, Bruce? That wasn't your fight. And I'm probably going to lose my job because of you. And maybe even my scholarship. So just shut up, okay?”

Bruce stopped. Harvey got into the car, slamming the door shut behind him. 

Mona put Aldridge into the backseat, and then she got behind the wheel. Harvey was sitting next to her, his face stony. 

They drove away.

Bruce stood there, watching after them, his fists covered in blood. 

 

So that was how he got expelled. And how he lost his only friend. 

He stood at the platform of the station on Thanksgiving Day, waiting for the nine fifteen train to Gotham. He'd called Alfred yesterday, telling him he'd be coming home for the break after all. Hadn't told him that it was because he'd got kicked out. He'd cross that bridge when he came to it. 

He checked his watch. The train was late. 

“Bruce,” said a voice, and he turned.  

Harvey was holding two slushies. Mint and Berry. “You're really going away?” He said.  

Bruce shrugged. He had his suitcase with him. He gestured to it. 

Harvey sighed, and came and stood next to him. “Lost my job. Didn't lose the scholarship, though.”

“Oh,” Bruce said. 

“Yeah.”

Harvey handed him the slushie.

“Still going to Princeton next fall?” Harvey said. They'd both got early admission. Harvey, because he studied so goddamn hard all the time, and Bruce because of his parents. 

“I don't think so,” Bruce said.  

Harvey looked at him in surprise. “Why not?” He said.  

Bruce smiled wryly. “I think we both know I'm better at hitting people than I am at economics.”

Harvey shook his head. He was looking at his slushie. Studying the beads of condensation on the outside of the plastic cup. “That's not true. You're brilliant.”

“Princeton is not the right fit for me,” Bruce said, “which is what the Dean of admissions told me today morning, when he called me up. He heard I got expelled.”

“Oh,” Harvey said. A pause. “Does Alfred know?”

“Not yet,” Bruce said.  

The platform was quiet. Thanksgiving Day. Everyone was with their families. Everyone but the two of them. 

“You didn't go back home for the break?” Bruce said.  

Harvey shook his head. “If dad saw me now he'd probably kill me.” he said. “He said not to come home till Christmas.”

“Jesus.”

Harvey shrugged.

“Come home with me,” Bruce said again. “Really. I'll show you how to drive in the Aston Martin.”

Harvey smiled, a little. It was sad. “I can't,” he said, “my Dad said I'm never supposed to speak to you again. If he found out I went to your place, he'd probably personally come to the manor and put me through a wall.”

“Does he ever really do that?”

“Do what?”

“Put you through a wall.”

“No,” Harvey said, dryly, “he just constantly threatens to.”

The train had come into the station. Bruce picked up his bag and his suitcase. 

“So what is the right fit for you?” Harvey said. “If it's not going to be college.”

“I think,” Bruce said, “that I'll go to Tibet.”

Harvey snorted. “What?”

“Yeah. I'll learn martial arts. Become a better fighter. Travel the world.” Bruce said, grinning. Even as he was saying it though, he felt something strange rising in his chest. Something he hadn't felt in a long while. Conviction. A sense of purpose. 

Harvey was shaking his head. He was grinning too. “You'll strike fear into the hearts of Glenn Aldridges everywhere. The champion of the weak and defenseless.”

“You're anything but weak and defenseless,” Bruce said, and the grin wiped itself from Harvey's face.  

“I'm really going to miss you,” he said, and he hugged Bruce. 

“Yeah,” Bruce said, quiet. 

They pulled apart. Bruce looked at the train. At a new life. Maybe he wouldn't fuck it up this time. 

“You better get on, or you'll miss it.” Harvey said. He smiled. “Promise we'll always stay friends?”

Bruce got on the train, and looked at Harvey from the steel steps.  “Of course,” he said, even as the train started to pull away from the station. “Always.”

  
  



	3. Home

 

 

A phone rang in the middle of the night.

Alfred stirred, sat up slowly. Tried to locate from where the persistent ringing was coming from. It sounded like the landline.

He got out of bed, and shuffled towards the study. Everyday, his knees creaked a little more as he stood up. His bones ached. He was getting older. It was inevitable, that slow march towards the end. He tried not to think of it. 

In the study, he picked up the receiver. 

“Wayne Manor,” he said, “may I ask who is calling at this untimely hour of the night?”

Then he heard a voice that he had not heard for four years and six weeks.  

“Al,” said the voice, “it's me, Bruce.”

Alfred clenched the receiver tight in his hands, to make sure he didn't drop it. He blinked hard in the darkness. 

“Alfred?” the voice said.  

“Yes,” Alfred said.  

“I– I need you to come pick me up.”

Alfred took a deep breath. Then another. He was holding on to the receiver so tight. Almost as if a part of him thought that he could hold onto Bruce through the phone. 

“Where–” Alfred swallowed back the wild thing in his throat, “where are you?”

A pause. “A village in the Gilgit-Baltistan district of Northern Pakistan. It's called Astore. You'll have to take a flight to Islamabad and then another to Gilgit. Then a four hour bus ride. Then twenty minutes by foot, going North as the crow flies. Don't travel in the night. There’s a house with blue walls, by the fishing hole. You'll know when you see it.”

Alfred waited a moment, until Bruce was done speaking.  

“What happened,” he said into the phone, quietly. Bruce would not have called if he had wanted to come back home. He would not have asked Alfred to come pick him up. He would have shown up one day, completely unannounced, and out of nowhere, quite in the same way he had left. 

Bruce was silent for a long time. “I am hurt,” he said, finally. “Very badly. I can't move by myself. I can't walk. They tried to put me on the Lazarus again, after the fighting pit, but I refused. If I hadn't refused they wouldn't have thrown me out.”

Alfred sank down onto a chair in the study, receiver still in hand. “I don't understand,” he said, “Who's Lazarus?”

There was only the sound of breathing on the other end of the line. For the first time Alfred noticed that it sounded unsteady. 

“It's a long story,” Bruce said. 

I have the time, Alfred wanted to say. You haven't talked to me in four years. I have all the time in the world. All the time in the world for you.

“I think I deserve an explanation,” he said instead. 

A silence over the line. “Yes,” was all Bruce said. 

“And?” Alfred said. 

Another pause. When he heard Bruce's voice again, it was static-y and crackling. “What do you want me to say, Al? That I made a mistake? Yeah, I did. That I should have called? Yes, I should have.”

“I wanted you to say that you missed me,” Alfred said, rubbing at his brow. It was the middle of the night here. So it must be mid-morning where Bruce was. He imagined Bruce sitting in the small room of an inn in a village in the Himalayas, squinting in the sunlight, huddled over a satellite phone. 

A sudden thought occurred to him. Bruce would be twenty two years old now. A grown man. 

When Alfred had last seen him, he had still been a sullen teenager, lanky and tall and quiet. He might look different now. Might be a different person. Someone Alfred wouldn't know at all. 

“I did,” Bruce said, his voice rough. 

Clearly not enough to have cared to call. Alfred closed his eyes against the darkness of the study. 

“I'll be there by tomorrow night,” he said. “Goodbye.”

“Goodbye, Alfred.” Bruce said. His voice still sounded strange. 

Alfred put the receiver down, and sat there, in the study, for a long time. 

Then he stood up again, and went to his room to pack his things. 

 

He reached the village twenty six hours later. Found the little house by the fishing pond. The locals had pointed to it, before they he had even asked any questions. It was strange. 

He knocked at the door, and it opened after almost ten minutes. 

“Sorry,” Bruce said. “It took me a while to walk.”

Alfred stared. Bruce looked. . .he looked like an adult. His shoulders were wider. He'd finally grown into his height. He'd left when he was only seventeen. Now he had a beard.

He also looked like hell. His lip had a deep gash on it, and his eye was swollen shut, almost purple in its colour. A bruise that was yellowing on his jaw. And that was only his face. 

His arm was in a sling, and his whole middle was wrapped in bandages. He was leaning slightly to the left, which meant he wasn't putting any weight on the right leg. There were lacerations on his forearms that resembled. . . claw marks. 

“It's not as bad as it looks,” Bruce said, from around his busted lip. 

He was standing huddled at the doorway, wrapped in a blanket. The blanket was stained with something dry and red. 

“Alfred,” Bruce said. Even his voice sounded different. Deeper. 

“Four years,” Alfred said, his voice a thin thread, “four years and not once did you attempt to contact me.”

Bruce looked down. “I know,” he said. 

“What makes you think that you can come back here, with no explanations, no calls, nothing? For all you know I could have died. The manor could have been sold off. Your shareholders think you're dead, you know. I thought you were dead.” Alfred said. His voice was not quite shaking yet.

Bruce looked stricken. Even as a boy, he'd worn his expressions so plainly on his face. He had felt so strongly about everything. “Alfred, I–” he stopped, taking a long, shuddering breath. “Can we not do this out here, in the doorway?”

At Alfred's continued silence, Bruce's shoulders slumped.  

“Please come in,” he said, his voice quiet. “I've been waiting for you all day. I made some tea,” he added, a little uselessly. 

Alfred stepped in, relenting. Bruce shut the door behind him. 

Inside, it was dark. There were strips of cloth soaked in water, laid out to dry by the window. Some antibiotics on a table. A small cot, pushed to one side of the room. 

“The landlady, Shazia, made me call you. I had a fever for a week. It broke just yesterday. She thought I was going to die. She said she didn't want a stranger to bury me.” Bruce said. “She comes by twice a day with food, in exchange for medicine for the village hospital. Her husband's the doctor here. She stopped taking them from me for a while though, when I was sick. Thought that I needed it more.”

Bruce was nervous, Alfred realised. He was talking more than he usually did. Except Alfred didn't know what was usual for Bruce anymore. He didn't know Bruce anymore. 

“I'll go get the tea,” Bruce said.  

“Sit down,” Alfred said. “You're hurt. I shall fetch it.”

He went to the corner of the room, the one opposite the bed, and took the little pot full of water off the gas stove. Added the tea leaves from a tin next to the stove. He did these things slowly, methodically. Tried to calm himself. 

“I–I was going to call you anyway,” Bruce said, eventually. He was sitting on the cot, against the opposite wall. Alfred had his back turned to him, so he couldn't see his expression, but it sounded like he was frowning. 

“I didn't need Shazia to ask me, is what I mean. I was just. I was trying to summon the courage.”

Alfred turned. “The courage for what?”

Bruce was looking down at his hands. They had what seemed like a million small scratches and cuts on them. “To tell you what happened to me. You'd ask, of course. You will. You'll ask where I was, these four years. The places I've been. The things I've done.” Bruce looked up at him. “I wanted to avoid that conversation for as long as possible.”

Alfred looked at him evenly. “Well, it seems that we're going to have it now.”

Bruce sighed. He ran a hand through his hair. “You're so angry I can feel it across the room.” he said. 

“Don't flatter yourself. This room is not very big.” Alfred said. He strained the tea and poured it into two cups. Added the sugar in his. There seemed to be no milk, so he went without. 

Bruce smiled wryly. “I was in Tibet, before this. France, for a short while. And six months in St. Petersburg. There was a whole mess with a cartel. But I spent the majority of my time here. With a man called Ra's Al Ghul. Him and his organization, the league of assassins.”

Alfred was spooning the sugar into the cup. He stopped mid-spoon. 

“You're telling me you dropped out of Princeton to become an assassin,” He said. 

“I didn't drop out. They denied me admission after I got expelled from school, remember?”

Alfred gave him the cup of tea. “As if I could forget,” he said, pointedly. 

Bruce had the good grace to look sheepish. Hee took the tea from Alfred gratefully, holding it with both hands. There was something about the way he was sitting– he looked guarded. Wary. 

“You're taking this well,” he said. 

“I didn't hear from you for years.The fact that you were training to become an assassin instead of lying dead in a ditch somewhere gives me great comfort, in fact.”

Alfred sat down on the cot next to Bruce

“You hate me,” Bruce said. 

“What?”

“You hate me, for what I did. I get it. I never said anything about going away. I never called, after. I never visited. I deserve it.” Bruce said. He sipped his tea, and then tipped his head back against the bare wall behind him.

“I don't hate you,” Alfred said. 

Bruce laughed a little, in disbelief. “Why not?”

“Because you're my boy,” Alfred said. 

Bruce looked down, jerkily. His knuckles were white around the handle of the cup. 

“The reason I didn't call you, all these years,” he said, quietly, “was because I was too afraid that if I talked to you I'd want to come back home. That I'd miss you too much. And I couldn't do that. I can– I can change things, Al. I can help people, now.”

Alfred looked down at his cup of tea. “By becoming a killer?”

Bruce shook his head quickly. “No, not by becoming a killer. I won't–I can't kill people. That was why they put me in the fighting pits. It was supposed to be my last rite of passage. A fight to the death. It started with me and one man, and every hour for one day, they would put another fighter into the pit. To test my endurance. Except I wasn't killing any of them, so were always more of them than me.” he shrugged off the blanket a little bit, and showed Alfred a burn on his shoulder. “Ra’s was furious by the eleventh hour, I think. They even gave one of them a flamethrower.”

“Christ,” Alfred said. “You were fighting twenty four men at once?”

Bruce smiled a little. “Not really. I knocked out a lot of them. The highest it ever got to was ten at once. After a while I think Ra’s realised that I wasn't ever going to kill anyone, so he just–well. He threw me out. I hitched a ride to the nearest village once I was conscious again. I've been here a week.”

“You need medical help,” Alfred said. His hands were shaking, so he put the cup down. “Take that wretched blanket off, it's filthy anyway. What are those, bloodstains? And are those claw marks on your arms? Did they throw a bloody bear into the pit too, or did the–”

“I want to go home,” Bruce said. His eyebrows had rushed together. “I want to go back to Gotham.”

Alfred stopped talking. 

Bruce was still looking down, and all Alfred could see was the back of his head. “I miss it,” he said. “I thought– I used to think that I'd never go back again. That I'd never want to. It was such a horrible place, Al. I felt like I couldn't think anymore, couldn't breathe. It made me want to–” Bruce cut himself off. Took a deep breath. “I had to get away.”

Alfred took the cup of tea out of Bruce's hands slowly, and held one of his hands. “I understand that,” he said, quietly, “but you should have told me. You should have told me how you were feeling. I would have come with you.”

Bruce sighed. “I didn't think a whole lot, when I was seventeen. I didn't– I didn't think anyone was on my side.”

“I have always been on your side,” Alfred said. 

“I know,” Bruce said. Then he lay down, so that his head was on Alfred's lap. 

“It really hurts,” he said. 

Alfred stroked his hair. “Where?”

“Everywhere.” 

“You're not on enough pain medication.” Alfred said. 

Bruce hummed, closing his eyes. “C’n I just sleep.”

“Of course,” Alfred said. “But medical help later.”

“Mm.” 

Alfred picked up his cup of tea again. His boy was safe. Hurt, but safe. Everything was going to be alright, eventually. 

“I have a plan, you know, for when we get back to Gotham,” Bruce said sleepily, “and I can't do it without you. We can turn the city around, Al.”

“You can do that after you've had some sleep,” Alfred told him. 

Bruce smiled. His eyes were still closed. 

Missed you, Alfred.”

Alfred sipped his tea. Stroked Bruce's hair. “I missed you too.”

 


	4. Adjustments

Damian woke up in the dead of the night. He was breathing hard. A nightmare.

This happened, sometimes. 

No matter. He would simply go to Father's room and sleep there. He got off the bed, stepping over a snoring Titus, and padded out of the room, and into the vast hallways of Wayne Manor. 

Usually when Damian had nightmares, Father took him to the library, or downstairs to the cave. Sometimes when Father was tired, they'd just lie in his bed and Father would tell him stories of Batman in the old days in a quiet voice, one arm around Damian’s shoulders. 

Damian secretly liked those times the best. 

He cracked open the door to Father's room. 

And then stopped, when he saw two people sleeping in Father's bed. 

Oh, right. He had forgotten that Kyle slept here, now. 

He hesitated for a moment, hovering at the doorway.  The room was dark, and both of them were asleep. Usually he'd just crawl into bed and wake Father up, but now– he paused, thinking. 

In the end, he decided to go back to his own bed. He didn't sleep the whole night. Not because he was a baby, and the nightmare had scared him too much or any such nonsense like that. It was just– it was strange. He felt this odd sick feeling in his gut. 

Earlier, Father would have put an arm around him and told him stories and given him those stupid hugs that Damian hated. And now he was too busy to do that with Damian. And he'd probably do it with Kyle instead. And then Kyle would eventually have a baby and Father would do all of those things with the other baby. A child that Father actually wanted. 

Damian frowned. It wasn't as though he needed stories and hugs. He was much too old for that sort of nonsense, anyway. He stared at Titus sleeping. 

The sick feeling in his gut was getting worse. 

 

  
*

 

Father got married on a Wednesday. It was in the manor, and then after that, there was a reception in the ballroom. Damian ate his prawn starters while Superman gave a speech. Only, Superman was in a suit and glasses, and smiling too wide to look particularly heroic. After it was done, everyone clapped. Damian ate more prawn starters. 

“God, look at how cute they look,” Brown was saying to Cass, drinking champagne even though Father had definitely told her not to. Brown never listened to Father.  

He turned to look at the main table. Father and Kyle were sitting right at the middle, laughing and talking. They were holding hands. 

Even as he watched, Father bent his head and  _ kissed _ Kyle. He had never seen him do that with  _ his _ mother. 

He felt that sick feeling in his stomach again. Probably too many prawns. He got up quickly, going to the bathroom. 

He didn't throw up though. He just stood there, in front of the toilet. And then he started to cry. 

It was very odd. He didn't  _ know _ why he was crying. It wasn't as though he was feeling upset about Father getting married. It wasn't that at all.

It wasn't that he cared about being replaced by some other son, some perfect child who never got angry and never got into any fights and didn't take in any strays, and never ruined the hedges with his Katana. Some child who was wanted and loved, and not just dumped on Father's lap because his mother didn't want him anymore. 

He put down the lid of the toilet seat and sat on it and cried harder. The sick feeling was all over his body now. It was in his chest. In his very core.The air in the room was suffocating.

He pulled off the stupid suit jacket that Alfred had made him wear, and he accidentally ripped the lining of one of the sleeves. Great. Just great.

Someone knocked on the door, and he wiped at his eyes quickly, standing back up. 

“What is it?” He said, in his most normal sounding voice. 

“Can I come in?” A voice said. 

Damian scowled. “No.”

The door opened anyway. Damian sniffled, trying to look aloof. 

It was Kyle. She was in her wedding dress still, with her gloves and veil and all. 

“Oh, shit,” She said, when she saw Damian’s face. 

Damian wiped at his eyes again. “What is it, Kyle?” he snapped. 

Kyle bit her lip. “I saw that your seat was empty.” She said. 

“Well, go away,” Damian said, pointedly. “You're invading my privacy.”

Kyle ignored him. Instead, she leaned against the wall. “I want you to know something, Damian,” She said. 

“I know, I know. You're not going to replace my mother, and nothing's going to ever change, and I don't have to call you  _ Mom,  _ and if you have a child we'll get along like two peas in a pod. Spare me the speech.”

“It's not that,” Kyle said. She was still leaning against the bathroom wall. She was pulling her gloves off, one by one. “I don't know if things will be okay between us. And I know that I don't like your mother, and she probably doesn't like me. And I really don't like dogs.”

Damian glared at her. “What's your point.”

“The point is, I know that I love Bruce. And that you do too. And the point is that I care about him enough that I want to try and make things work with his children. Even the ones that don't particularly like me. Let me see that sleeve.”

“What?” Damian said. 

“The sleeve. The one that's torn,” Selina said, pointing to his suit jacket. 

Confused, Damian gave it to her. 

Wordlessly, Selina stuffed one of her gloves into the lining, so that it still looked black. 

“From a distance, no one's going to notice,” Selina said. “There. Now run along, and go finish eating your dinner.”

Damian glared, even as he took the jacket back from her and put it on. “You can't tell me what to do. You're not my mother.”

“No,” Selina said, amused, “I guess I'm not. Alright. I have a plan.”

 

Five minutes later, and they were in the kitchens, being jostled and pushed around by the wait staff. 

“Are you quite sure no one's going to be looking for us?” Damian shouted, over the noise of the dinner rush. 

“It's a wedding,” Selina said, “everyone's too drunk and happy to notice.”

“What about Father?” 

Selina shrugged. “Oh, I give him about three minutes before he finds us. Better make it quick.”

Damian looked around warily. “What if someone notices?”

Selina smiled. “What are they going to do? Yell at the bride?”

Damian shrugged, and went for the wedding cake. It was supposed to be wheeled out later, but Selina had reasoned that if they ate around it, and not the actual insides of the cake, no one would notice. It was a fancy cake, with several tiers. It came almost up to Damian’s height. No one was going to notice a few missing fondue flowers. 

He bit into an edible sunflower. 

“This is. . . pretty good,” Damian said, surprised. 

Selina looked smug. “It's called Vanilla Rose. I picked it.”

“Rose is not a flavour,” Damian said, eating a fondue flower petal. 

Selina ate a stick of chocolate that was supposed to be a part of a tree in a garden, on tier three. “That's exactly what your Father said.”

Damian beamed. He ate another flower. 

“What,” Father said from behind them, “are the two of you doing.”

Selina ate the rest of her chocolate stick. She was holding it between her fingers, like a cigarette holder. She smiled, slow and catlike. “I estimated three minutes. You're late, darling.”

  
  


A month after that, he had another nightmare. 

He woke up, rubbing at his eyes. Got out of bed, stepped over Titus. Stepped into the vast hallways of Wayne manor. 

He went to his Father and Selina’s room, and crawled into bed, between the two of them. 

“I had a bad dream,” He mumbled, and Selina lifted the covers so he could get in under them. 

Father shifted a little, gathering Damian up in his arms. “What's wrong?” he asked, his voice rough with sleep. 

Damian shook his head. “I want a story,” he said. 

“From Bruce? He has the most boring stories,” Selina said. She sounded half-asleep too. “They're all about how truth and justice prevails in the end, and how he puts Kiteman away, or something dumb like that.”

Damian giggled a little, and Selina smiled. Bruce sighed.  

“Fine,” he said, “you tell the story. I'm going back to sleep.”

“Fine,” Selina said tartly. For all their arguing, Damian noticed that they were holding hands over him. He snuggled into his little nook between them a little deeper. 

“Damian, I'm going to tell you about the time I went to Paris with the lead singer of _the_ _Clash_ , and stole a Maserati by the banks of the river Seine.” Selina said. 

Bruce snorted. 

Selina narrowed her eyes. “I thought you were going back to sleep, Bat.”

“The lead singer of the Clash has been dead for sixteen years, Selina.”

“Maybe this happened sixteen years ago, Bruce. You never know.”

“When you were nineteen? Sure.”

“Go back to sleep, Bruce.”

“Oh no, Selina. Now you've drawn me in. What can I say, I'm simply riveted.”

Damian grinned. Bruce telling him stories while they were both half asleep had been nice, but this– this bickering and cuddling was kind of nice too. 

He settled into his Father’s and Selina’s arms, and waited for the inevitable, far-fetched story. 

  
  
  



	5. Where the Mountains meet the Sea

Jason squinted, looking at the high peaks in the distance. In the dying light of the sun, they were bathed in a deep pinkish hue. He sighed, hiking his rucksack up his back by a few inches. 

“We're too far off. We’ll have to set up camp for the night,” he said. 

Damian scowled. “I told you we would have made faster progress if you had let me pick the route.”

Jason turned to look at Damian, an incredulous expression on his face. “You wanted to scale a cliff face. If I'd let you do that, your Dad would never let me hear the end of it.”

Damian shook his head. He was in one of those bright orange puffer down jackets, which combined with his height (or lack thereof,) made him look approximately like he had the proportions of a beach ball. An angry, orange beach ball. But, you know, still deadly. 

“I've been trained in rock climbing since the age of three,” Damian said. “I would never do something as stupid as fall.”

“Hey, I believe you,” Jason said, “and I'd never pass up the opportunity to throw you down a cliff face, believe me. But your Dad might not feel the same way.”

Damian scowled again. “Father would never have to know.”

“Kid, Bruce knows everything. He's probably got a tracker on that stupid jacket of yours.”

Damian looked at his jacket, narrowing his eyes. “He wouldn't.”

“He absolutely would,” Jason grinned. “C’mon, you like cliffs, right? I think we can find a cool place to pitch the tent.”

 

Bruce was the one who’d sent them on the mission, was the thing. 

He'd called Jason into the cave after Patrol one night, and handed him a file. 

“The oxy Batgirl found in Burnside. I traced it back to a distributor working out of Mexico and Florida, and then further back to the original lab in West Colombia. It's in the mountains. Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta.”

“You want me to go check it out,” Jason said. 

“I want you to take Damian with you,” Bruce said.

Jason raised an eyebrow at that. “Damian? I barely know him.”

Bruce was looking down at the file, like he was thinking of what to say. “He's a good kid,” he said, finally. “He's hard to get used to, initially,and a little. . . volatile, but he's a good kid. Good fighter.”

“Pretty sure that's what you tell everyone about me,” Jason joked, and Bruce's face took on a pained expression. 

Things between him and Bruce were still. . . delicate. They hadn't had any fights in a while, and he'd even come over for Christmas two months back. Things were going okay. They moved around each other carefully, like they were walking on thin sheets of ice and waiting to hear it crack. 

What Jason had said just now had definitely been a misstep. A crack in the ice. 

Jason bit his lip. Shit. 

“He just wants to belong,” Bruce said, quietly. “He only gets along with me and Dick. Tim is– well. They don't gel together. I was hoping you could. . . spend some time with him. He'd like you.”

“I don't know, Bruce,” Jason said, slowly, “maybe I'm not the right kind of influence for him.”

Bruce was still studying the file keenly. Actually, he was pretty much looking anywhere except for at Jason. 

“He wants to be part of the family. He just doesn't let people in on it,” Bruce said. 

Jason had a feeling that he wasn't just talking about Damian.

 

So he took Damian with him. And now they were camping right next to a cliff face. 

Jason rolled out their sleeping bags. Damian was sitting almost at the very edge of the cliff. His back was to Jason, so he couldn't see his face. 

“I hope you don't roll around in your sleep,” Jason joked. They weren't actually camped that close to the cliff, but Damian visibly stiffened anyway. 

“I'm not an idiot,” he snapped. 

Jason frowned. “I didn't even say that.”

“Whatever,” Damian said, getting up and dusting himself off. “I'm going to go look for wood for the fire.”

He stalked off. 

Jason sighed, and went back to setting up camp. “Talking to you is fucking work,” he muttered. 

 

They ate dinner sitting in the thin grass, while watching the sunset. At least, Jason watched it. Damian frowned at some dirt, while stabbing idly at his stew. 

“The view’s nice, huh? I heard that the mountains meet the ocean here. Imagine that. Mountains on a beach.” Jason said. The sun had painted the sky in brilliant streaks of pink and crimson, and the snowy peaks in the distance seemed to almost glow. 

“I don't care,” Damian said. 

Jason raised an eyebrow, but said nothing. Bruce had not been kidding when he'd said that. Damian was hard to get used to. 

They ate in silence for a while. 

Damian poked at his stew some more, frowning. 

“This is terrible,” he said. 

“Yeah, well maybe you should've let me grill you some sausages instead. Stew is the best vegetarian thing I could do,” Jason said, stuffing some sausage in his mouth. 

“I hate it,” Damian declared. “I don't want any of it.”

“Fine,” Jason said, getting up. “Okay, fine. You don't have to fucking eat it.” he said, snatching up Damian's bowl of stew. He emptied its contents into the fire, which roared up for a brief second. “You don't have to eat dinner at all.”

Damian’s eyes went wide for a second, almost as though he was scared. Which made Jason realise that he was almost twice as big as the kid, and he was looming over him with a fire roaring in the back, and he probably looked—

Jason frowned. He thought for a second about his own father, and what he'd done to Jason. It had been shit exactly like this. 

So he drew back, ready to apologize, when Damian began to scowl again. He got to his feet quickly. “I hate you,” he said, darkly, and stalked off, towards the tent. 

Jason sat back down, and sighed. He started eating his sausages again. 

Okay. So maybe he'd lost his shit a little bit then. But could you blame him, really? The kid had been an asshole to him ever since they'd started the hike. He'd tried to play nice. It wasn't his fault that the kid was being insufferable. 

Jason frowned to himself. That sounded a lot like a justification, even to himself. 

He watch the last of the sunset and then put out the fire. He went into the tent after a while, and Damian was already out, curled up his sleeping bag. Jason switched off the electric lantern, took off his jacket and sweater, and climbed into his own sleeping bag.  

He stared at the roof of the tent. Maybe it was him, and not Damian. Maybe he was the one that wasn't good at family stuff. 

He was the one that just couldn't belong. 

 

He heard the crying in the middle of the night, and it woke him up slowly at first, and then quickly all at once. 

“What's wrong?” he said, blinking hard, trying to see Damian in the dark. 

A sniffle. No answer. 

“Damian,” Jason said. He was freaking out. This was Damian. Damian didn't cry. 

A silence, and a muffled sound of cloth being brushed against skin, and suddenly there was a blast of cold air. Damian had zipped open the door of the tent. 

“Hey, where are you–” The tent was zipped back up. Damian had left. 

Jason blinked a few more times, trying to process things. Then he climbed out of his own sleeping bag, and went after Damian. 

Damian was sitting where he'd been sitting earlier, at the very edge of the cliff. It was pitch dark. 

“Damian, I can't see a thing. You need to stay away from that edge,” Jason said, very carefully. He tried to remember what Bruce would say to him when he’d had nightmares. He couldn't remember. 

“I want you to throw me down this cliff,” Damian said. 

Jason hesitated. “What?” he said. 

“I want you to throw me off this cliff,” Damian said again, very matter of factly. “It's not very high, and I could take the hit without getting injured too badly.”

Jason scrubbed at his face. He came and sat down next to Damian. There was a little sliver of moonlight illuminating his face. Damian’s face was serene. He wasn't crying anymore, though there were still tear tracks on his cheeks.

“Okay. Is there anything I need to know about here?” Jason said. 

Damian was looking at the bottom of the cliff. “My mother,” he said slowly, “she had these training exercises. They'd throw you off a cliff and you'd have to scale it back up. You must be familiar with them.”

Jason looked down to the bottom of the cliff. And then all of a sudden, it hit him. 

He looked at Damian, who was staring at his hands. 

Shit. 

“You're scared of the mountains.” Jason said quietly. “Does Bruce know?”

“I'm not scared,” Damian snapped. “I'm not scared of anything.”

“Yeah? Then how come you want me to push you off a goddamn mountain?” Jason said. He wasn't gentle or warm, like Dick. If someone snapped at him, he was going to snap right back. Damian glared at him. “I'm not scared. I'm just. . . uncomfortable. It's a problem I need to get over. Something I have to conquer. Like Father did, with the bats. If you push me off and I tuck and roll, I can get off with maybe just a sprained ankle. A bruised rib, at most.”

Jason looked down at the sheer drop. Looked like six hundred feet, minimum. Maybe more. He couldn't see too well in the dark. “You're going to break every fucking bone in your body.”

“Are you doubting my ability to–”

“Jesus Christ, kid, why does everything I say have to be a personal insult against your abilities as a fighter? Batman could get pushed off this cliff and he'd break every bone in his goddamn body. If you do this the only thing you're going to conquer is a six square foot area at the bottom of that ravine, full of smashed Damian bits. There’s a fine line between brave and stupid. Even I know that. Now let's get away from the edge before we break our necks, okay? I'm going back into the tent, and you should probably come too. It's cold as balls out here.”

Damian looked stunned into silence. 

“Are you coming or what?” Jason said, getting up. 

After a brief hesitation, Damian stood up too, and followed him into the tent.  

Jason zipped up the flap. 

“Get into your sleeping bag,” he said. 

Damian got into his bag, and Jason zipped it up halfway, so he could at least get a little warm. Jason sat next to it.  

“I'm going to tell you something. You're going to listen to me, okay? And you’re not going tell Bruce about it.” Jason said. 

Damian looked up. Jason could see that he'd caught his interest. 

“After I– you know. After. I was in the League, training with Talia. And Talia, she had a network of spies. She'd make me work with them, sometimes. Most of them were these incredible assassins, capable of any sort of disguise. They could blend in anywhere, talk any language, adapt to anything. I watched them work for a long time, and I watched them slit people's throats, and interrogate people, and torture them, and mutilate the friends and families of their targets.”

Damian was watching him, his eyes intent. 

Jason leaned a little closer. “And then I came back to Gotham. And Gotham, it's a big city right? We've got what, seven million people living here? There's people everywhere. The roads and pavements and parks are crawling with them. Like insects. So I started to think that those spies were following me around. Everywhere I went, someone was watching me. Following me. Their eyes on my back. It was– I don't even know. It was insane. My heart was pounding all the time, and this one time I yelled at a stranger on the road to leave me the fuck alone, for once. Almost beat him up. I started carrying my gun everywhere. I carried a grenade with me once, on the bus, with my finger on the pin the whole time. I told myself it was just in case of an emergency. I stopped going to crowded places. Then after a while, I stopped going out at all. I just sat at home, staring at the door, waiting for someone to come in and murder me.”

“And then what?” Damian whispered. 

Jason smoothed a small section of the sleeping bag with an idle hand. He could feel Damian’s thin shoulders under it. The kid was still so small. “And then one day Dick barged into my apartment. I'd missed the last three dinners Alfred had invited me to, in the manor. Dick thought it was because I'd been fighting with Bruce again, so he wanted to come over and yell at me, I guess. Then he saw me. He left and came back forty five minutes later, with Leslie.”

They were still in the dark. Both he and Damian had forgotten to switch the electric lantern back on, Jason realised.  

“It was hard, Damian. It was really hard. She put me on medication, and then I had to do some counselling, which was maybe the most uncomfortable thing ever, and there was a whole support group thing, but look at me now, huh? I'm in a mountain range in Colombia. And I'm not even sweating.” Jason grinned. 

“That's because it's so cold,” Damian said, and Jason laughed. 

“Well. Yeah. But I feel fine, is the thing. I feel good. I just needed some help. And that was okay.”

Damian was silent for a while. 

“I'm hungry,” he said, finally. “You threw my dinner into the fire.”

Jason shook his head. “I thought we were having a moment, here.”

“We can have a moment after I've eaten,” Damian said, and Jason smiled a little. 

“I'll look for some trail mix, demonspawn,” he said, ruffling Damian’s hair. Damian batted the hand away, but only half-heartedly. 

Baby steps. 

 

By early morning the next day, they'd made it halfway up to the lab. They were on a winding dirt trail, with a few inches of snow on each side, when they stopped. 

“Hey, Damian,” Jason said, looking at the map, “wanna see something cool?”

“What for?” Damian said. He was wearing the bright orange jacket again. 

Jason shook his head. “There's just no pleasing you, is there,” he said. “Come on, keep walking. You're gonna see it in a sec.”

Damian shrugged, and they kept walking. Fifteen minutes later, he stopped. 

“That's the ocean,” he said. Far off, several peaks beyond them, near the horizon, there was an unmistakable glisten of water. A line of silver before the sky started. 

“Yeah,” Jason said.  

Damian just kept looking. “The mountains meet the ocean.” He said. 

“Isn't it beautiful?” Jason said. The sun was just beginning to come up, and the clouds looked like they were on fire. The whole sky was beginning to lighten into dawn. 

They stood there for a long moment, looking at where the mountains met the ocean, and Damian leaned closer, towards Jason. 

Jason put an arm around him. 

“You've gotta tell your Dad,” he said quietly. “He worries about you a lot, you know.”

“I know,” Damian said.  

A silence. The sun was rising, inch by inch. 

“You always call him my father,” Damian said, suddenly, “but he's yours too.”

Jason looked at him. “What?”

Damian blushed. “Father. He's your dad too.” 

Jason tilted his head, thinking. “Yeah. You're right, I guess. It's just that he hadn't been, for a long while.”

“He can't just stop being your dad.” Damian said, stubborn. 

“No,” Jason said, feeling the wind ruffle through his hair. “I guess not.”

“Yes.”

“Yeah. Alright. He's my dad too.”

Damian nodded, like he'd won an argument or something. It made Jason smile, a little. Maybe they were the volatile ones. The hard to like ones. The ones that had trouble belonging. But they could still look out for each other. 

They could still at least do that.

He hiked his rucksack up his back by a few inches. "Come on, squirt. Let's go. At this rate, we won't reach the labs till next year.”

Damian grinned at that. 

They went.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey! I won't be posting tomorrow. Updates will resume from Thursday.


	6. Christmas

 

 

Dick fiddled with the cuff of his shirt absently, sitting in the cab. The driver had faint Bollywood music playing on the radio. Dick closed his eyes, trying to focus on the tinny beats and nothing else.  

“The next exit, right?” The cab driver asked. 

“Yeah,” Dick said. He looked out the window, at the roads he knew so well. Two small wrapped gifts sat in his lap. 

“Christmas party, huh?” Said the driver. 

“That's right,” Dick said. 

They passed by a patch of woods that Dick and Bruce used to take Ace for walks in. They had this game, where Dick would try to hide, and Ace would have to track him down. Ace used to love that game. He’d go crazy, his tail wagging and his tongue lolling. He hadn’t been very good at it at all, and Dick would usually have to shout to attract his attention. Bruce would laugh the whole time, holding onto the leash. 

“Some party you're going to, in that tux of yours.”

Dick smiled tightly. “It's a. . . family thing.”

“Ah,” the driver said. 

Dick looked out of the window again. There went that tree he used to scale when he was twelve. The one that he'd fallen out of and broken his wrist. Bruce had stayed up with him all night after Alfred had set it, and they'd watched movies and eaten popcorn until Dick had fallen asleep. 

“You want me to turn the music down?” The driver said. 

“No, it's okay,” Dick said. “What about you? Working on Christmas day?”

The cab driver smiled at him from the rear view mirror. “We don't celebrate Christmas.”

“Oh,” Dick said, embarrassed. 

“My sons still like to get gifts the next morning, because all their friends in school do.”

They passed by the pond where Bruce used to take him swimming in the summers, even though they had a gigantic pool house. He remembered the shouting and laughing, the cool wet around his body, the hot sun on his back. Bruce would always threaten to throw him in, and he’d shout in joy, wrestling and kicking at Bruce's iron grip around him. They'd come home with damp hair and sunburnt shoulders, big grins on their faces. 

“Yeah,” Dick said, “kids can be like that.”

“Families,” The driver said, smiling. “you love them, but they drive you crazy sometimes.”

Dick laughed, feeling a little hollow. He thought about the trees and ponds and gardens and all the old haunts of his childhood, ones that he couldn't recall anymore without feeling that familiar ache in his chest. That emptiness. 

“I know what you mean,” he said.  

 

*

 

The ballroom was full of people milling around, smiling and laughing and drinking. Dick made his way through the crowd, exchanging pleasantries with people he knew, and introducing himself to people he didn't. Talking came naturally to him. Always had. At least, it always had with people who weren't Bruce.  

He ran into Barbara near the punch line. 

“Dick!” she said, her whole face lighting up. She rose up on her toes to kiss his cheek. 

“Every time I see you you get taller,” she said, pouting jokingly. 

“Hey Babs,” he said, grinning. At least Gotham had one good thing. 

“You're very late, by the way. Alfred's been looking for you.”

“But not Bruce,” Dick said. 

Babs looked at him like he was a kicked puppy, or something. “Aw, Dick. You know that's not true.”

Dick shrugged. “I just came to make an appearance. I'll probably leave in an hour anyway. I have a ton of paperwork to do.”

Babs shook her head. “The two of you are never going to let this go, are you?” 

Dick shoved his hands in the pockets of his tux. “Not my fault he's being an ass.”

“Master Dick, there you are,” he heard a voice say. He turned and grinned. 

“Hey, Alfred. Happy Christmas Eve. I got to you a little gift,” he said. 

Alfred raised an eyebrow. “Is it a tie pin again?”

Dick blushed a little. There had been those three years in a row when he’d gotten Alfred various tie pins for Christmas, instead of a real gift. Back then, Alfred had been an enigma to him. What were his interests, outside of cooking and gardening and telling Bruce off for wearing muddy shoes inside the house? Hell if he knew. 

Over the years though, he'd wisened up a little. 

Alfred loved anything Dick gave him. 

“I can't tell you, it's a secret,” Dick said, handing him the gift. 

“I see,” Alfred said. “So it's a tie pin.”

Dick's mouth quirked up. “Sterling silver. Vintage piece.”

“Thank you, master Dick.”

“No problem, Alfred. Where's Jason? I gotta go give him his gift.”

“Are you not staying for the night?”

“Nah. I've got a lot of work to do. Paperwork and stuff.”

“Ah,” Alfred said. He did not look entirely convinced. “At any rate, master Jason is in his bedroom, finishing his homework.” 

Dick smiled. He remembered back when he'd have to miss parties because he hadn't finished his homework. It sucked. 

“I'll go see him for a sec, okay?” he said, waving goodbye to Babs and Alfred. 

He walked across the hall, sidestepping people and waiters serving hors d'oeuvres, until he had almost reached the doors. Someone called out his name. 

“Dick!”

He stiffened. Then slowly turned, pasting a smile on his face.  

“Hey, Bruce,” he said. 

Bruce was talking to an elderly couple, the Pembrokes or the Pendletons or someone, and he was in full Brucie mode. He had a huge grin on his face, and beckoned Dick over to where they were standing. 

Dick went, reluctantly. He hoped Bruce would keep this short. 

“My ward, Dick Grayson,” Bruce said, smiling at the Pendletons or Powells or whatever. 

Dick's eyes burned at that. It was always ward, never son. 

“Hello,” he managed to get out, “it's nice to meet you.”

The Pendletons smiled back at him. 

Bruce’s smile was wide as ever. He clapped a hand on Dick’s shoulder, and Dick closed his eyes, briefly. 

“He's working in the police force, you know. I told him we'd find a place at WE for him, but you know, he wanted to make a name for himself,” Bruce said, laughing. Like it was some fucking joke, what Dick wanted to do. 

The conversation went on for a couple more minutes, and Bruce kept getting more fucking condescending. 

“I told him, go to Princeton, like I did? But did he listen?” Bruce said, grinning.

“You dropped out,” Dick pointed out.  

Bruce’s smile was so full of good-natured spirit and concentrated friendliness that it was obviously fake. “You,” he said, “didn't even go.”

Dick’s polite smile was frozen on his face. “You'll have to excuse me,” he said to the Powells, “I need to go see my little brother.”

Then, with every drop of will power that he had in his blood, he walked away. 

He had meant to go to Jason's room, but stopped somewhere in the hallways, leaning against the wall. He took in a couple harsh breaths. There was something ugly crawling in his chest, something angry, like an insect clawing its way into his lungs.  

He took another shaky breath. No one ever got to him like Bruce did. It was so strange, because no one had ever been there for him like Bruce had, either. Maybe that was it. Maybe it hurt the most when people you loved stopped caring about you. 

It was fine. He would go give Jason his gift, tell everyone he was sick, and go home early. It was going to be fine.  

Footsteps coming towards him. Dick looked up, and sighed.

“There you are,” Bruce said, striding towards him. He looked pissed, “what the hell was that?”

Dick scrubbed at his face. “Not today, okay Bruce?” he said. “Let's do this some other time. I'm really tired.”

Bruce's eyes were narrowed. “Tired of what? Showing up once in a blue moon and then storming around the house? Not staying for Christmas and making Alfred upset? That's what you're tired of? Because I am, too.”

“Making Alfred upset, right,” Dick said, quietly. “Because that's what you care about.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” Bruce said. His voice had taken on a dangerous tone. 

Dick push himself off the wall, his eyes blazing. “Bruce, you don't even care, do you? Alfred’s been trying to get me to come to the manor for months now, to visit. And you never call. Or text, or email, or even–even send a letter! The way I see it, you don't give a damn about what happens to me.”

“I don't call because you didn't want me to call,” Bruce said, his voice cold. “You made that very clear when you left.” 

“I didn't say that.”

“No? I remember you telling me that you never wanted to talk to me again. I remember that.”

Dick swallowed. Horrified, he found that there were tears pricking at his eyes. That ugly insect was clawing in his chest again, a white hot ache in his middle. 

“That was because you never took me seriously, Bruce! I was always going to be a kid to you. And I told you I didn't want to take over Wayne Enter–”

“This was never about you taking over the company,” Bruce said. He was raising his voice,now. A small part of him wondered if the people outside could hear them. He didn't care anymore.“I didn't care about that. I just wanted you to think, for once, about your options before you–”

“I did think!” Dick yelled. “I hate to break it to you Bruce, but I'm not the knuckle dragging moron that you think I am!”

Bruce's eyes were dark with anger. “You’re sure as hell acting like one right now.” he said. 

Before Dick could fully lose it and do something like punch Bruce, a head poked out from a doorway next to the wall Dick had been leaning against.  

“What's going on?” Jason said. “Are you guys going rounds again?”

“Go back inside, Jason,” Bruce snapped, and Jason's eyes widened. 

“There's no need to talk to him like that,” Dick said. The tears were still in his eyes. He hated it. Bruce never took him seriously. This sure as hell wasn't going to help things. 

“Jason, go back inside,” Bruce said again, in that awful way that he did, where he treated them more like soldiers instead of sons, his voice an order. Jason wouldn't dare disobey. Dick hadn't either, for a long time. 

Jason pulled his head back in and shut the door. 

Dick shook his head. “You do this thing, Bruce. You let people in and you take care of them, and you let them get attached. Then you just– you just use them. And whatever they do just isn't good enough for you. Nothing’s good enough for you. You poison people. That's what you did to me, and that's what you're doing to him,” Dick said, gesturing to the closed door. He was really crying now, tears flowing down his face.  

An expression passed over Bruce's face like a shadow. Something like shame. Guilt, maybe. And then he just looked angry again. 

“This isn't my fault,” He said.  

“Of course it's your fucking fault, Bruce! Everything you do is–”

“You left me!” Bruce roared. “You were my son and my best friend, and you left. You were the one that walked out. And I was the one that was left alone, and there was this–this empty hole in my–” Bruce stopped talking, and took a deep breath. “You left me,” he said again, quieter.  

They were standing at opposite ends of the halfway. It wasn't very wide, but in that moment it seemed to be like a gaping chasm between them, a distance they would never be able to overcome. 

“I had to leave,” Dick said, and his voice was wet and shaky, and he hated it, “I had to. You– you were never happy with anything that I did. I wasn't good enough. Ever.”

Dick looked down, sniffing, wiping away his stupid tears. 

There was a silence.

“Of course you were good enough.” Bruce whispered. “Dick, you were everything. You were everything I could never be.”

Dick looked up, blinking. Bruce’s brows had rushed together, like he was actively in pain. Like someone had ripped him apart, and now he was just standing there, dripping blood and holding onto his insides. 

“Then why didn't you ever call?” Dick whispered. 

Then Bruce crossed over to his end of the hallway, and he pulled him into his arms, his hands around Dick, strong and warm. Dick closed his eyes and pressed his forehead against Bruce's chest, and let himself crumple. Bruce's hands were stroking at his back, smoothing his hair.  

“Shhh,” he was saying, “it's okay.”

“I left, and then you replaced me,” Dick said, crying, “like it was nothing. Like I was nothing. And I love Jason, I do, but–” he stopped. 

“I didn't think you needed me anymore,” Bruce whispered. “I didn't call because I was afraid you wouldn't answer.”

Dick was pretty much crying into Bruce's tux. Jesus. 

“You're right,” Bruce said, after a while. He hadn't dropped his arms yet. “What you said about how I'm– how I'm poison. And I ruin people. And–”

“Shut up, Bruce,” Dick said, crying. 

“I– alright,” Bruce said. 

“I was mad. I didn't really mean that.”

“Alright, Dick.”

The door opened again, all of a sudden. “Listen, Bruce, Dick’s right, you know. You can't talk to me like– oh.” Jason said, stopping. 

“Come here, Jay,” Dick said, beckoning him over with one free hand. 

Jason looked uncertain. “Are you. . . crying?”

“A little,” Dick said, sniffling. “Come on.”

Jason looked more wary still. “Are you going to make me hug you?”

“Yeah. It's group hug time.” Dick said. 

Jason looked pleadingly at Bruce. Bruce shrugged, looking resigned. 

Jason sighed. “Okay,” he said, and walked over to them. “This is really dumb. I wasn't part of the fight or anything.”

Dick pulled him in. “It doesn't matter. We're all making up.”

Bruce put one hand on the side of Jason's face. “I'm sorry I yelled,” he said. 

“It's okay.” Jason said, going pink. 

They were still for about ten seconds, and then Bruce began to pull away.  

“Nope,” Dick said, and Bruce sighed, and stayed in the hug. 

“Hey, Dick,” Jason said from somewhere, his voice muffled by Bruce's tux, “are you staying for Christmas?”

“Yeah, littlewing,” Dick said. “Of course I am.”

The Christmas party carried on in the background. 

“How mad d’you think Alfred's going to be if we blow this thing off and go play Xbox in your study?” Dick said. 

“Quite mad,” Bruce said slowly, “but if I told him that I made up with you, it could possibly neutralize his urge to throw us all out of the house.”

Dick grinned. “And I didn't get him that tie pin for nothing. What are we waiting for? Let's go.”

They went. 

 


	7. Constants

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Goddammit I keep forgetting to post, sorry that I missed a day lol

Bruce woke up feeling sick. 

That was normal. He had been expecting it, really. 

He rose slowly, wincing and making his way to the bathroom. He looked at himself in the mirror. A bleary-eyed, pale man looked back. He sighed, scrubbed at his face, and went back to bed.

He woke up again, sometime around late afternoon, judging by the light in the room. He was feeling distinctly worse. 

Alfred was sitting by the bed, reading a book.

Bruce groaned something incoherent. 

“Quite, master Bruce.” Alfred said, calmly flipping to the next page. 

Bruce groaned again, and turned over. “I think I'm sick.” He said. His chest felt tight.

“Really,” Alfred said dryly, but the hand placed on his forehead was cool and comforting. Bruce closed his eyes against it. Something about it made Bruce think of when he was little, and he'd get sick and stay home from school. Alfred would take care of him and make him drink soup. 

“You have a fever,” Alfred said, his voice soft.

“I know,” Bruce said, turning his face into the pillow. He was sweating. “It was the fear toxin, from yesterday night. Side effects.”

The effects of the fear toxin were usually nullified by the antidote that he administered to himself, but there were often lingering effects. Like high fever.

“Ah,” Alfred said. “I'll fetch some medicine.” He said, and started to rise from the chair.

Something caught in Bruce's throat at that. Something strange. A ragged shard of panic. “Alfred,” he croaked. “Don't– just– just stay. Okay?” 

He was shivering. Shivering and sweating. For some reason he couldn't get memory of him being a sick child out of his head. A child. His parents. Dying in a gutter in front of him. His chest was feeling tighter still.

“Bruce,” Alfred said quietly, and he never called him that, never called him just  _ Bruce _ . “Are you sure the effects of the fear toxin are gone?”

Bruce shook his head against the pillow. “I'm sick.” He said. “Can't get up.” 

“Can you move?” Alfred said. 

Bruce tried. He shook his head. “I don't think so.”

Alfred was quiet. “I'm not leaving you, master Bruce,” he said finally. “But I must go down to the cave and fetch a syringe and a few milligrammes of the antidote. There is no one else in the manor at present. I must go, or you won’t get better. Do you understand?”

Bruce shook his head. He realised he was curled up in the very middle of the bed. He was a scared boy again, and Alfred had just brought him back to the manor from the police precinct, and was trying to explain the concept of death to him.

_ “But Alfred,” he was saying, his face wet with old tears, and he was curled up in bed, and Alfred was smoothing his hair back from his head. “Are they in heaven?” _

_ “Yes,” Alfred said, and then he hugged him. Alfred never hugged.  _

“Master Wayne,” Alfred was saying. Bruce forced open his eyes. 

“Take a deep breath,” Alfred said, and Bruce did. “there you go. Good.”

Bruce kept taking deep breaths. Alfred rose and quickly left the room. Bruce's breaths became harder. 

He closed his eyes again.

_ He was fourteen, and he’d been suspended from school for picking a fight. He had a busted lip and and a black eye, and Alfred was silent the entire drive back home.  _

_ Bruce crossed his arms, looking out of the window defiantly. Whatever Al was gonna say, he didn't want to hear it. _

_ “Your parents death was not your fault,” Alfred said, all of a sudden, when they were nearing the driveway. _

_ Bruce looked at him, too surprised to be angry any longer. “What?” _

_ “You did not fail your parents by not taking action in that alley. Trying to rectify wrongs that you never made won't work out in your favour, master Bruce.”  _

_ “I didn't–” _

_ “The bully you fought with. Was he picking on you, or someone you felt the urge to protect?”  Alfred said. _

_ Bruce frowned, and looked out the window again. _

_ “I thought so.” Alfred murmured. “You are not the sworn protector of the entire world, master Bruce.” _

_ “Al–” _

_ “And next time, be smarter about it.” Alfred said. “May I recommend actually learning how to fight.”  _

_ “Al!” Bruce yelped, and Alfred’s mouth twitched up ever so slightly.  _

A prick of an needle slipping into his vein. Bruce sighed. 

“Give it a minute.” Alfred was saying, his voice somewhere far away. No, that couldn't be right. He was right here. Right here.

“Alfred,” Bruce said, blinking open his eyes and waiting for his vision to focus. 

“Mm.” Alfred said. He was hooking up Bruce with some kind of IV.

“I'm sorry I got suspended.” He said.

The hands hooking up the IV paused. “That was twenty six years ago, master Wayne.”

“I know,” Bruce rasped, his throat still dry. “But I never said sorry.”

Alfred sat down beside Bruce on the bed. 

“Apology accepted.” He said, sounding amused. 

Bruce sniffled. He was a  little child again, sick with the flu, and Alfred was spooning soup into his mouth.

“Alfred,” Bruce said, hesitantly.

“Yes?”

“Can I– may I have some soup.” 

“Of course,” Alfred said. There was something warm in his voice. He rose up, standing. 

“Wait– wait.” Bruce said. “Don't go yet. Just stay a little while.”

Alfred hummed, amused and sat down again. “Just for a little while.” He said.

Bruce closed his eyes.

He was six years old again, and he was sick. Alfred was fussing over him.

He was eight years old again, and Alfred was trying to explain what death was.

He was fourteen years old, and Alfred was putting antiseptic cream on his split lip.

Bruce was forty years old, and he was sick again, and Alfred was sitting next to him. Always.

“Just for a little while.” Bruce murmured.

  
  
  
  



	8. Phone call

The Javelin was rattling dangerously now. It had been shaking for a while, now, but now that they were starting to get sucked towards one of Xancith V’s larger moons, Bruce could see the screws beginning to drum about in their fixtures, the ones that were lining the metal walls of the hull, holding the whole ship together. 

Bruce tried to brace himself, reaching for something that was firmly attached to the ground. He could find nothing, because he was lying on the floor, and all the chairs and monitors and consoles were far from him, near the head of the ship. 

The head of the ship, which was on fire. 

He was lying on the floor because he'd fallen there, after half-running, half-stumbling up here to the control station, from the observation deck. He hadn't been able to walk all the way to the head of the ship, or even put out the fire, because he had a six inch deep stab wound in his gut. He stared down at his hands for a moment, and they were covered in dark wet. Oily black and rich, a puddle that was growing steadily larger. 

He was bleeding out.  

The javelin kept rattling, moving everything that wasn't nailed to the ground from one side to another. This included him, and when he was shoved onto one of the ship’s walls, a hard force that seemed to plunge right into his gut, he screamed.  

There was blood. There was a lot of it.  

Not all of it was his. Some of it was Hal's, who was lying unconscious in the corner, a thin, sticky thread of blood seeping from his temple. Hal had gone down fighting. 

Bruce raised his head to look at the screaming controls and dials of the ship, the flashing lights and that red  _ danger _ sign. They were going to be re-entering the atmosphere, if he did nothing. They were going to crash and burn. He was going to die. Hal was going to die. 

Bruce closed his eyes. It had all happened so fast. One moment Jordan had been joking around, doing his usual annoying routine of trying to get on Bruce's nerves, and the next moment there was a fiery pain in Bruce's middle, and Hal’s smile had died quickly, and he'd whipped around, only to see that flash of Sinestro’s yellow suit. Hal squared his shoulders,and prepared a construct. Then came the blood. And the shouting, and falling, and then the ship was on fire.  

And now came the dying.  

He rose up somehow, to sitting position. 

Painkillers. He needed to take some of the morphine he kept in his belt for emergencies. At least then he'd be able to think straight. At least then the pain wouldn't cloud his brain, making him slow and stupid with it.  

He reached for his belt, gasping as he moved. It hurt so much. 

The javelin was rocking around hard, now. They  were at Xancith V’s rings. The little rocks and asteroids were hitting the exterior of the hull, and he could hear the unsettling thuds and occasional sounds of metal tearing and crumbling. 

The ship was not going to last.  

Nor was he. 

It was too late to call Clark, now. He had bled out too much. By the time he got here, there would be nothing but a crater on the side of one of Xancith V's moons, and the remains of two dead people inside it. 

Nothing else. 

Sometimes he wished he could be like Clark. Fight back, like him. Be as strong. As brave. But he hadn't been, and now Hal was going to die. And now he was going to die. 

He blinked back tears, surprised. It was not the notion of death that scared him. Death was inevitable. It was this. . .sudden nature of it. He hadn't even had time to say goodbye. 

He fumbled at his belt, dropping things with his clumsy fingers. He could barely see through that haze of pain.

There was a communicator, inside. One that he used for Patrol. He must have forgotten to take it out when he was preparing the suit for an off-world trip. He stared at it for a moment, with wonder. It was a last grace that he had been granted. A small mercy.  

He put the communicator to his ear, and switched it on. 

It was a direct line to Robin.  

“Father, please tell Drake that the shortest route to Newtown plaza is by park place, and not the flyover bridge, we're on patrol and he's driving me–”

Bruce closed his eyes. “Damian,” he breathed. 

“Yes,” Damian said. He sounded impatient.  

Bruce cleared his throat. Even now, he found it so hard to say. Even now, when he had never meant it more. But if he didn't say it now, he'd never be able to say it again. 

“I love you with my whole heart, Damian,” Bruce whispered. “With my whole heart.”

There was only silence on the other side of the communicator. A spell of static, and then more silence. Panic seized Bruce's chest. Maybe he'd lost the signal. 

“What?” Damian said, and relief flooded Bruce's veins. 

“And I want you to tell your brothers that I love them too. So much. And they  _ are _ your brothers, Damian. They love you, and they only want what's best for you,” he said, roughly. The pool of  blood by his side was getting larger. 

“Father, are you having some sort of  _ stroke _ ?” Damian said, his voice sardonic. 

“Tell Tim that he did so well in that SyncTel meeting last week. Tell him– tell him I was proud of him,” he says. He'd been hard on Tim, all week before the meeting. Making sure he had his presentation down right, his notes. Making him read and re-read his prepared speech. 

_ You're going to have to do all this yourself when I'm gone, _ he had said to Tim. 

And now he really was going to be gone. 

“Tell him he's so smart,” Bruce whispered, “and he's so  _ good _ . There is so much goodness in all of you. So much that just wasn't there in me.”

Damian was silent over the line again. 

“What's going on,” he said, but this time he didn't sound impatient. He sounded scared. 

“There was a fight,” Bruce said, swallowing. “Hal and I– we got hurt. I don't,” he paused. 

“You don't  _ what _ ?” Damian’s voice was harsh. Almost angry.

Bruce looked out of the plexiglass port windows of the Javelin. He could see a small, bright dot. Coming closer and closer. Hal was still lying in the corner, unconscious. 

They were hurtling towards their ends. 

“I don't think we'll make it,” Bruce said. 

There was only silence. 

“Tell Jason not to telegraph his right hooks,” he said, quietly, “he always does that. Did that when he was a kid, too. Gives him away. Tell him not to get into any trouble. And to stay safe. And check in on all of you, once in a while.”

“Father,” Damian said. 

Bruce was still looking out of the window. The bright white light was getting larger still. So was the dark puddle on the floor. 

“And tell Dick not to work so much. Take care of him, Damian. Make sure he eats something, okay? And tell Cass I'm sorry I won't be able to come to her ballet recital. Next time, maybe. Make sure Alfred goes for his doctor's appointment next Thursday. He needs to carry the report from the previous consultation. It's in my study, in the second drawer of my desk. It's very important.”

“Father,” Damian said. 

The bright light was almost at the window of the ship. It blurred in his eyes, splitting and coalescing and splitting again. He closed them. He couldn't think straight. 

“And tell Selina I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said those things. I know it's hard for her to hear, but she's right. The baby would never be safe with people like us, anyway.”

“ _ Father _ ,” Damian yelled, and his voice cracked.

“Yes, Damian?”

“There must be another way.”

“Can't call Clark. He's too far.”

Damian was starting to sob. “You can't go. You can't. It's not fair.”

“Don't cry,” Bruce said, softly. There were almost at the white light, now. “You. You are,” he paused, trying to think of the right words, “you are much more than what your mother made you out to be. What I made you out to be. You can be so much, Damian. I'm so honoured to have known you.”

He was crying too, he realized. He didn't want to go. 

“Father, I–”

with another burst of static, the line got cut. 

Bruce stared at the communicator for a while, and then put it down, and waited for his death.  The largest moon of Xancith V got closer and closer, angry red swirls entwined into its icy white surface. 

In the corner of the room, Hal Jordan opened his eyes. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote this at 4 in the morning one day instead of sleeping. I really have no excuse.


	9. The Law of Zeus

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> birthday/christmas gift for Renecdote.

Bruce found Damian sitting on the corner of the ledge of the old Precinct building, sharpening his sword methodically. The metal glinted meanly in the moonlight.

He sat down next to him. “We’re not here to intimidate,” he said, his breath misting in the cold. It was December, but there hadn’t been snow in a while. “put the sword away.”

Damian’s face darkened. He sheathed his sword.

“It’s a Katana,” he said.

“I know,” Bruce said.

“I don’t like this, Father.”

“I know that too,” Bruce said. He shifted, so that he had a better vantage point of the road. The men across the street were still, standing with their briefcases in hand. The moonlight glinted meanly off of them, too.

“Where are Penguin’s men?” Damian muttered.  
“Patience,” Bruce said, but he was wondering the same. They should have been here twenty minutes ago.

Damian scowled. “Any word of Falcone?”

Bruce shook his head. “No one’s seen him. Not in months.”

“I heard,” Damian paused, looking at Bruce, “I heard he had been killed.”

Bruce looked down from the terrace, at the men on the street.

“By Catwoman,” Damian continued, after a longer pause.

“It’s just a rumour,” Bruce said.

There were six men down there. Two of them were holding assault rifles. Another– a pale man in a white suit, was scanning the buildings around him with a look Bruce didn’t like. The two of them were well-hidden, shielded by a billboard with an old, peeling banner, and swathed in shadow, but he didn’t like it anyway.

Damian was still interested in talking about Falcone. “The Maronis are saying they hired her, and she killed him in his sleep. Slit his throat. But there’s on the street that she shot him. Point blank.”  
Bruce’s jaw tensed. It was a minute thing, a subtle shifting of muscle and skin, and yet he knew that Damian would pick up on it. Possibly this was why Damian had been talking about it in the first place. To get a reaction out of him.

“I wouldn’t know,” he said finally, his voice even.  
Damian watched him for a minute. He wondered what his son was thinking. He wondered that a lot–what was in Damian’s head. Probably nothing good about him. Of the few people Bruce had been close to, Damian had liked Selina.

It didn’t matter anymore. She had left and he had had to stay behind and pick up all the pieces and that was what he had done. It didn’t matter.

He turned his attention back to the men across the road, to the man in white. He was still scanning the buildings intently. He had a narrow, sharp face. His lips were pursed.

“That must be him,” Damian said. “Bloodfly.”

An unsavoury name for an unsavoury man, Alfred had said sardonically, when they were drawing up their plans for tonight.

Bruce had gathered them around the consoles, pointing at the screen to each of their positions. Tim and Jason at the docks. Stephanie and Dick inside the old Precinct building, in offensive positions. Cassandra was to be at the Gotham harbour, where Falcone’s men were supposed to be. Damian and Bruce on the roof, with their eyes on the ground.

Gordon had told him that something big was going to happen tonight, and his own intel had confirmed it. One of Penguin’s runners broken down and told Jason that they were selling the biggest stash of guns this side of the Atlantic tonight. Jason had that gift. The gift of getting grown men to lose control of their bowels and confess everything.

They were selling enough guns to arm an army, the runner had told Jason.

Whose army? Jason had asked.

The runner looked him in the eye and shook his head. Bloodfly’s, he said.

Bloodfly. Bruce watched him now, watched his stillness, his quick eyes, flitting from building to building.

“Father,” Damian said. Bruce turned. Damian was looking up.

It had started to snow.

Something was wrong. He could feel it in his bones.  
Bruce stood. “Let’s go,” he said, “there’s no deal happening tonight.”

“No,” said a voice, to his back, amused and soft, “there isn’t.”

Bruce turned, shoving Damian behind him. Ten men had crept up onto the roof, and their leader had a makarov pointed at Bruce’s face. He felt Damian stiffen behind him.

“Bloodfly,” Bruce said, realizing.

The leader tilted his head. He looked ordinary. Brown hair, brown eyes, medium build. Someone you’d walk past every day.

“You’re not so stupid after all,” he said.

“Who’s the man in the suit?” Bruce said,“Across the street.”

“Oh,” Bloodfly said, “just some actor I hired. Penguin isn’t showing up either, if you hadn’t pieced it together by now.”

“I had,” Bruce said. Damian tried to get out from behind him, Bruce shoved him back in place. “You must have knocked out Spoiler and Nightwing downstairs.” Let it just be knocked out, he prayed. Just knocked out, and not shot or butchered.

Bloodfly shrugged. “I did what I had to.” he said.

“And now what?” Bruce said, his eyes flicking between him and the men. Ten men. All armed. He might have been able to take them, but there would be punches thrown and stray bullets, and Damian was right next to him.

The muzzle of the makarov stared down at him. “And now I shoot you,” Bloodfly said, “And then the little one.”

“Run,” Bruce whispered. He couldn’t see him from where he was, shielded by Bruce’s body, but he knew Damian was shaking his head.  
“It’s an order,” Bruce said. “Run.”

One of the men tried to pull Damian out from behind Bruce, and Bruce pivoted around and twisted his arm hard enough that he heard the sharp crack. The man screamed.

Bloodfly shot him.

The pain blossomed in Bruce’s stomach, spreading and welling until he could feel hot wet blood seeping into the plates of his armour. Damian was frozen behind him. Frozen and wide-eyed.  
He grunted, and with the last ounce of strength, gathered Damian up into his arms, putting his back to the men for half of half a second.

Damian’s eyes were still wide.

“Grapple,” Bruce whispered.

Then he threw him off the roof.

They shot him again. In the back, this time. Twice.  
He heard the gunshots, but they sounded muffled. Like he was underwater. Then he wasn’t standing anymore and his vision had gone dark.  
After that there was nothing.

*

He dreamt of a boy, sharpening his sword. The world around them was black, but the sword glowed.

“Put that away,” Bruce said to him. He didn’t like the glow. The strange, unearthly light. It was altering the boy, changing him. Couldn’t he see?

The boy scowled. “I don’t like this, Father,” he said.

“I know,” Bruce said, and he sat down next to him. The boy’s face was awash with light from the glowing sword. He was shaking. He got cold in the winters.

“I don’t like you,” he said.

Bruce bent his head. “I know,” he said again, his voice low.

“Come back,” the boy whispered.

Then the boy and the sword were gone, and he was in a room in the manor, sitting in a chair. There was a silence.

“I killed him,” A voice said, and it was Selina. There was blood on her hands.

He looked up at her. “Falcone?” he said.

The room was dark. By the window, a shadow watched him. His cape fluttered in the breeze.

“I killed him,” A voice said. A different voice, this time. “Your son. He couldn’t get away quick enough. The grapple jammed. He fell. I ended it. I shot him,” Bloodfly said.

“No you didn’t,” Bruce said, and he was angry now, and he tried to move towards him, but Bloodfly disappeared in a slash of light.

The slash of light widened, and now they were in a hospital, and Damian was crying next to Bruce’s bed, his shoulders shaking.

“Come back,” he wept, his voice small. “Why won’t you come back?”

*

Bruce opened his eyes.

He was in a hospital. The same one, from the dream. Or perhaps that hadn’t been a dream at all. The room was dark and empty; he was surrounded by machines. When he tried to move, a pain so sharp shot through his back that he almost threw up.

Gasping, he closed his eyes again, and then the hospital room was gone, and it was dark once more.

The dreams came back.

They were in the Batmobile, and they were arguing again.

“I killed him,” Damian said, and he was so angry that he sounded close to tears. “He wanted to hurt you. I’d do it again.”

“You don’t even like me,” Bruce said, exasperated. Damian was a mystery to him. With the others, it had always been easier. At least he had known where he stood with them. They had all had their tough days, but ever since Talia had shown up with Damian, it seemed like almost every day was a tough day.

Damian sniffled, looking at his feet.

The dark interiors of the Batmobile faded into the wallpaper of the hospital room.

There was a man sitting next to him, wearing a leather jacket and a dark scowl. “All the Falcones are dead. So’s every district drug distributor working for the Falcones from here to Metropolis. That’s almost twenty people, Bruce,” he said. “And we haven’t seen Damian in a week. You need to wake up and fix this.”

“Selina,” Bruce whispered, “why did you kill Falcone?”

“Jesus,” The man said angrily, looking at someone else that he couldn’t see, “he’s still delirious.”

 

He dreamt again.

They were at an art gallery uptown— the Flugelheim museum. They came here almost every month, at Damian’s request. Far be it from Bruce to trying to stop his son from doing normal things.  
Damian was running around looking at all the paintings. Bruce was checking his phone, bored.

“Stop that,” he said, when Damian went too far ahead, “don’t run around here.”

“Sorry, Father,” Damian said, slowing down.

 

Bruce looked up from his phone. Damian’s eyes were trained on his feet now, and not the paintings. He knew that the boy loved art.

You raised a soldier, not a boy, he’d yelled at Talia, the last time he’d seen her.

I prepared him for the real world, Talia had said, her eyes flashing.

He’s just a child, Bruce had said.

Talia shook her head. If he’s just a child, you’d stop making him fight for you, she said. She was smiling. Her smile was a horrible twisted thing in his chest. She had him there.

“Go ahead,” he said to Damian, at the art gallery.  
Damian looked up.

“Go on,” he said. “I don’t mind if you run ahead. Just don’t let me lose sight of you.”

Damian grinned, and scurried forward.

*

He woke again, and now it was morning. He was breathing hard.

“Easy there,” A voice said. Bruce looked. Dick was sitting near his bed, his eyes rimmed with red. He looked tired.

Bruce swallowed, and his throat burned at it. He felt sore all over. “How long?” he croaked.

“Two weeks, give or take,” Dick said. “You’ve been up and talking before, but you’ve probably forgotten.”

Bruce closed his eyes. Two weeks.

“Where’s Damian,” he asked.

Dick was looking down. He didn’t just look tired, Bruce realised. He looked like he was at the end of his rope.

“He switched off his communicator. And all his trackers came up at the bottom of the river. He isn’t there,” Dick said, before Bruce could ask, “we checked.”

Bruce tried to get up, but a tidal wave of pain came crashing over him, and he had to lie back down before he threw up.

“Don’t,” Dick said, and there was a quaver in his voice, “please. Don’t move. If you go searching for him you won’t come back either. Things are rough in Gotham right now. There’s gunfire in the streets. No one’s been leaving their homes after dark.”

“What happened?” Bruce asked, but he was already going under again, and Dick’s voice dissolved into the soft, black hole that he was falling into.

*

He dreamt of a little boy, playing next to his feet. He tugged at Bruce’s pants leg, and Bruce bent and picked him up, inhaling the sweet smell of baby boy and green apple shampoo.

“Pa-pa,” the boy giggled, giving him a wet little kiss on his cheek, and Bruce smiled back.

They sat down in the high-backed chair in his study, and the little boy fell asleep in his arms, his warm breath against Bruce’s neck.

He stroked the boy’s dark hair, content to sit there in the silence. After a while, he fell asleep too.

When he woke up again, it was dark outside. The machines around him beeped. Tim, who was sleeping in the chair next to his bed, was snoring.  
He sat up a little, rubbing at his eyes.

His chest ached. It ached.

He supposed it was from the gunshot wounds.

*

Later that night, someone slipped open the window and entered his hospital room.

Tim was still sleeping by the chair, his cheek propped up against his hand at an angle that looked like it would give him a crick in the neck, come morning.

The shadow stood in front of his bed, looking at him.

He blinked open his eyes, and the shadow stepped back in surprise.

“The Gazette says you’re dead,” Selina said.  
Bruce shook his head.

The shadow stepped into the light, and sat down at the very edge of his bed, like she was poised to make a run for it at any moment.

There was a long moment of silence. She was only watching him. Her eyebrows had rushed together, like she was going to shout. Or cry.

He tried to sit up slowly. His back fucking screamed at that, but he did no more than wince. Once he was sitting up, he looked at her again.

“I heard you killed Falcone,” he said. His voice was raspy and rough with disuse.

Selina looked away. “He came to my house,” she said.

Bruce watched her.

She shifted, looking uncomfortable under the stark hospital lights. “He told me his little brother had turned up in Gotham. Francesco Viti. Told me that Frankie Viti’d told Carmine that he had a daughter. She was grown now, and she lived in the East end. Viti gave him the address, and here he was, standing in my living room, while I held a gun to his head.”

The room was deathly still, save for the periodic beeping of some of the machines, and the low sound of Selina’s voice. She sounded tired. So very tired.

“He was talking about all this stuff about empires and legacies, and how even a half-breed should have their share of the family’s bounty. I don’t know,” she said, slowly, “I don’t know what came over me. All I could think about was my sister and the hovel that we lived in when I was a kid and the beatings we’d get every night and why hadn’t he come for me then, Bruce? Why hadn’t he come for me then,” she said. Her voice was so quiet now he could barely hear her.

“The gun was in my hand and then all of my sister’s blood was on the carpet in front of me and he was right there,” she said, closing her eyes, “He was right there.”

Bruce was silent. He was not ready to feel sorry for her. Not just yet.

“I just wanted to be left alone,” she whispered. After that she looked away, lifting her hand to her face to wipe something away.

In the corner of the room, Tim stirred, mumbling. They both watched him. He stilled after a minute.

“Where’s Damian?” he said, finally.

Selina looked surprised. “He’s not with you?”

“He’s been missing. Ever since I got shot. He was there.”

Selina looked down again. “Bruce, it's– it’s possible he's–”

“He’s not dead,” Bruce said, “he came here at night once. I thought I’d dreamed it.”

“Come back,” Damian had wept, his voice small. He had thought Bruce couldn’t hear him. “Why won’t you come back?”

Selina’s eyes widened. “It’s possible he was at the Dreyfus Hotel.”

“What happened at the Dreyfus Hotel?” Bruce said.

Selina was pale. “Haven’t you heard? God, Bruce, there was a massacre. Two days ago. Now that Falcone’s dead, all his men gathered at the hotel to pick their new leader. Every man of his, from here to Metropolis. They thought the title would pass onto his son, or maybe the daughter, Sofia, but,” she paused. When she spoke again, her voice was a tight thread, “He killed everyone, Bruce. Every potential heir, every distributor with too much power. All the mob bosses in the room. He opened fire on the men while they were eating dinner. He’s nearly wiped out all the Falcones. Only Frankie Viti’s left, and he’s in hiding now. Some say he went back to Italy. But He– he’s a monster, Bruce. He doesn’t have any rules. You stay away from him, you hear me? Stay away.

“Who?” Bruce said, but he already knew. His throat was frozen with fear. Damian would have been there. He was sure of it, suddenly. Damian would have wanted to take revenge.

“Bloodfly,” Selina said.

 

After Selina was gone, the window closed behind her, he watched Tim in his chair. He looked out the window. It was snowing outside, a thick blanket of it covering the empty, lamplit streets. It struck him for the first time that he had probably missed Christmas.

Where would Damian go?

He thought for a long time. Thought of every place in Gotham, every alley, warehouse, street corner, every hotel, plaza, sidewalk.  
Where would he go?

Bruce scrubbed at his face. This was stupid. He didn’t even know if Damian was alive. The wound in his stomach started to ache again, and he pressed at it lightly, trying to alleviate the pain.

He rose slowly, his muscles screaming in protest, and gently took off his IV and his hospital bracelet. The dressing around his bullet wounds was still fresh, so he didn’t bother changing it. Just grabbed an extra roll of gauze from one of the drawers by the bed. He changed back into the civilian clothes that someone had laid out by the table for him, and wrote out a brief note for Tim, and left it by the bed.

He was halfway down the corridor before he stopped, turned back, and went into the room. He pressed a kiss against Tim’s hair while he slept, and then walked back out the door.

*

Falcone’s penthouse was uptown, on the other side of the river. The sixty first floor.

The elevator doors slid open, and he walked out on to the penthouse floor. All the windows were open, and the night air blew Bruce’s cape against his legs. He’d swung by the cave on his way here. He looked out through the windows, at the view. At Gotham. The penthouse was high enough that he could see almost all the way across the river, all the way up to Newtown Plaza from here.

Where was his son?

Lying dead in a ditch somewhere, a voice whispered in his head, and he pushed it away. Damian wasn’t dead. He wasn’t.

“Batman,” said a voice, “I thought I’d killed you.”

Bruce turned.

Bloodfly was sitting on the chaise lounge on the opposite end of the room, a highball glass in his hand. There was a tumbler of whisky in the table next to him. The glass in his hand was empty though, like he’d been about to pour himself a drink.

“I hadn’t been expecting guests,” Bloodfly said, tilting his head curiously. “Sit down, let me pour you a drink. It must hurt like a bitch, being out and about after getting shot three times.”

Bruce stayed where he was.

Bloodfly smiled, amiably. “Come on,” he said, “I can make a mean espresso old-fashioned. My wife’’s recipe. Have a seat. Take it easy,” he said. He’d pulled a gun out from under the drinks cart, and he set it down on the table.

“Sit down,” he said again. His voice was still friendly.

Bruce sat down on the sofa in the front of him.

“That’s it,” Bloodfly said, “take a load off.” He poured out another whisky, sliding it across the table to him. “Must be hard, waking up to an all-out gang war in your city. Lots of people are dead, Batman. You missed all the action.”

Bruce looked at the glass of whisky. “You’re not supposed to be here,” he said.

Bloodfly swirled the ice in his drink. It tinkled against the glass. “Actually, this is exactly where I’m supposed to be,” he said. “Hiding out in a safe place, until the fighting dies down.”

“You shot down all the Falcones,” Bruce said.

 

“Not the Falcones. Just their men. Alright, and also his kids. Alberto and Mario. Dumb as rocks, both of them. Mario read books while mouthing the words out until he was fourteen. Big, strong boys, certainly, but not capable of leading. No, Sofia was always the smarter one. The daughter. Sofia was the first to figure out what was going on at the Dreyfus. She died running, at least. Most of the others died with a bullet between their eyes, their heads planted in a bowl of vichyssoise.”

“They didn’t expect me to do it, that was for certain. No,” Bloodfly said, laughing, “I suppose I was the last person they’d expect it from. Not in my nice tux and smile and distinct lack of guns, no?”

“You were invited,” Bruce said.

“Invited? I was hosting,” Bloodfly said. “We had to find a successor, didn’t we? It was imperative that the legacy continued. My brother was always going on about legacies. Legacy this, Empire that. It would never stop. On and on he went, like a broken record.”

Bruce straightened, even though his muscles protested. “You’re Frankie Viti,” he said. “Falcone’s brother.”

Bloodfly looked at him, his dark eyes intent. “He wasn’t my good brother. He was my brother by law. Carla’s brother. We got on well enough, and then all that business with you and the Gordons happened. What did Carmine do? He tried to blame my son.”

“Johnny Viti,” Bruce said.

Bloodfly nodded. “He placed a hit on him. I was in Chicago, when he killed Carla and Johnny. My son was twenty three, did you know that? My first son, and my last. When I got to Gotham for the funeral, I saw it every night, up there on the sky. Your bat signal. It sickened me, how you were being allowed to do this after what you’d done to our family.

Carmine was weak, in truth. For years, he let you walk over him and his. And he sacrificed my family to save his hide.”

“So you let it slip to him one day that you’d found out that he had a daughter,” Bruce said.

Bloodfly smiled. “Selina Kyle. The Cat. I know that two of you were… connected, shall we say. Until recently. I had heard that her mental state was more frayed, these days. I have friends in Villa Hermosa. As for the issue of parentage, it was true enough. Her mother worked in Carmine’s mansion in the Narrows not long before Sofia was born. She spent a lot of late nights there. Things came together on their own, almost. I barely needed to whisper in Carmine’s ears.”

“You planned all of this,” Bruce said. They had all been pawns, in some twisted game of chess that Bloodfly had set up.

Bloodfly looked down, at his drink. “Falcone never really liked me. He used to call me a scavenger,” he said. “I would go after the smaller crime families in Chicago. Feed on dying organizations. Dissolve their wealth and manpower into my ranks, swelling my own to larger and larger sizes. Falcone thought I was a coward, picking fights with men that were littler than me. He told Carla I was like a bloodfly once, before we were to be married. She told me so. A parasitic little insect that feasts on rotting flesh.”

Bloodfly smiled, crookedly. “But parasites are smart,” he said, “aren’t they? They grow within the host. Feed off of them, and wait until they’re weak enough to fully harvest their bodies. Carmine was right, all along. He was a smart man. I respected him, for the most part. It’s a shame he’s dead, but I can’t say that I’m not glad I’m taking Gotham out from under him. I just wish he were alive to see it.”

Bruce stood up, and stared down at Bloodfly.

“What?” Bloodfly said, “we’re already at the fighting part? You haven’t even finished your drink.”

“You’re a talker,” Bruce said, “I’m not.”

That made Bloodfly smile. “Very well,” he said, “Have it your way.”

He picked up the gun he set on the table, but Bruce had already moved back, flipping over the table so it stood on its side and acted as a shield. He ducked behind it before the gunshots, hearing them penetrate the thick mahogany, one by one. The glasses and tumbler had fallen to the floor with a crash of smashing glass, and there was liquor all over the floor. When Bloodfly paused to reload, Bruce shoved the table aside, throwing a batarang at him. He aimed true, and it struck Bloodfly’s arm. Bloodfly dropped the gun, cursing.

The loud noise had roused his bodyguards; two men who came lumbering in from the other rooms, their guns trained on Bruce. Bruce took his grapple gun out, and shot at the ceiling fan. He wrenched it free from the ceiling, and it fell on one of the men. The other was still shooting at him, and one of the bullets grazed Bruce’s gauntleted hand. He barely felt the pain under all that adrenaline. Bloodfly had gotten back up, and reloaded his gun. He shot at him. Missed. Bruce ducked behind a pillar. The bodyguard was coming up behind him, and he shoved Bruce into a bookshelf, but not before Bruce shoved a shard of broken highball glass into his shoulder. The bodyguard screamed, pushing Bruce away.

Bloodfly was shooting at him still. He hit Bruce’s armour, but the bullets pattered to the floor harmlessly. He had learned from previous mistakes.

He fell, rolling into a defensive crouch. He felt his stitches pop.

Bloodfly watched him. “And all of that, with three bullet wounds,” he said, laughing in amazement. “I can see why Carmine was scared of you.”

Bruce stood. “You’re out of bullets and out of men,” he said.

Bloodfly looked at his gun, and pointed at Bruce, pressing the trigger. The gun clicked, uselessly.

“I guess I am,” he said. His voice was strangely calm.

“Let me handcuff you now, and no more harm will come to you,” Bruce said.

Bloodfly’s smile flickered, and then disappeared. “My wife is dead, Batman. My son is dead. I have nothing to lose. You can be damned sure that I’ll fight like it, too.”

He charged at Bruce, a shard of glass from the tumbler in his hand, and Bruce leaned back, twisted Bloodfly’s arm behind him. The floor was wet from all the liquor though, and he slipped, losing his grip for a a split second before he could regain his balance. Bloodfly pushed out of his grip, and slashed at his chest. He pressed his fingers into Bruce’s stomach, where he’d been shot. Bruce grunted, and with his last ounce of strength, he punched Bloodfly in the face, and now the floor had teeth on it too, along with whisky.

Bloodfly crumpled, falling to his knees. Bruce knelt with him.

“Where’s my son?” he said.

Bloodfly only looked at him, his eyes glazed.

“Where’s my son?” Bruce repeated, louder.

Bloodfly shook his head, and then he closed his eyes. He fell to the floor.

Bruce shook him. “Where’s my son?” He roared, but Bloodfly was unconscious.

He almost fell too then, and when he looked down he saw that he was bleeding through his bandages. He swallowed, his throat dry. The pain was catching up to him now, approaching slowly but inevitably, and then all at once his arm and stomach and back were on fire. He tried to sit up, stumbled, fell.

When he woke up, it was still dark out, and Bloodfly and the other men were lying on the ground, where he’d left them. Bruce blinked, sitting unsteadily. He must have blacked out, if only for a few minutes.  
He went over to the chaise lounge that Bloodfly had been sitting on, and sat down heavily, leaning his head back against the wall.

The penthouse looked like there had been a massacre in it.

The table was still lying on its side where Bruce had left it, pitted with bullet holes. There was liquor and broken glass all over the floor, and darker rivulets of blood mingling with the whisky. The ceiling fan that had been wrenched out of its socket in the ceiling was sparking and lay broken on the floor, its blades bent and too crushed to spin. A man lay under it. Another, by the tipped over bookshelves, a shard of glass deep in his shoulder. Blood dripped from his wounds to the thick volumes below, seeping into the white of the pages. Near the chaise lounge, lay Bloodfly. His face was a bloody mess.

Bruce looked away.

There were bullet holes in every inch of the plastered walls. One of those walls had a large painting on it, a bullet-ridden Gustav Klimt.

Suddenly, Bruce knew where his son was.

*

He staggered into the third floor of the Flugelheim museum, closing the window behind him, and switching off the security sensors. The east wing – the one that displayed all the art.

It was a large hall, and he had some searching to do.

He was dripping blood all over the floor. That wasn’t good. He kept walking.

His vision was blurring and clearing intermittently, and he knew he was going to black out again if he didn’t sit down soon, and rewrap the bandage around his arm. Some more of the stitches on his stomach had popped open. He gritted his teeth. He kept walking.

He walked by La Grenouillere and Prometheus Bound. He walked and walked, and his blood dripped and dripped, a trail of red following him as he walked past Witches’ Flight and The Face of War.

He stopped when he saw Damian. He was sitting huddled in front of a large painting, his arms hugging his knees. There was blood on the front of his Robin uniform. He looked like he was asleep, his eyes somewhere else, somewhere far, even though they were open.

“Damian,” Bruce croaked.

Damian started, and turned towards him. His eyes widened. “Father,” he said, his voice high and surprised. “You’re bleeding.”

Bruce looked down at his stomach. The wound where the stitches had popped was bleeding again. A dark red spot was blooming on his front. That must have been where the blood had been dripping from.

He sat down then, or perhaps he fell down, he wasn’t sure anymore. Damian was at his side all at once, his hands on Bruce’s shoulders. He was shaking him. He was saying something. Bruce couldn’t hear him though. He was underwater again, and everyone else, everything else was above and far away, on a shore somewhere. He wanted to tell Damian it would be fine. It was all going to be fine.

“I found you,” he said instead, “you’re alive.”

Damian was pulling something out from Bruce’s belt and putting it into his ear, and saying words, harsh and clipped and underneath that, perhaps scared.

Bruce lifted a hand and put it on Damian’s cheek. “It’s alright,” he whispered, “it’s going to be fine.”

Damian was still talking on the communicator. Bruce waited till he was done.

“They’re coming,” Damian said. He scowled at Bruce, but his lowering lip was quivering. Damian had always been so bad at hiding his true feelings. They were always just below the surface, simmering and swelling up from the depths. So much like himself, when he had been a child.

He touched his son’s cheek again. “I thought you were dead,” he said. “Why weren’t you at the hospital?”

Damian looked down. “I had more important things to do,” He was glaring at a painting. “You wouldn’t even wake up.”

“You weren’t there when I did,” Bruce said, softly.

Damian had no reply for that.

He was sitting against a wall now, and Damian was kneeling by his side. He was under the painting that Damian had been looking at. He looked up at it. The Lament for Icarus.

“You were at the Dreyfus. You were going to kill him,” Bruce said. “Bloodfly.”

Damian looked away. After a long while, he nodded.

“Revenge only begets revenge, Damian,” Bruce whispered. “Look at me. I’m bleeding out on the floor of an art gallery. Nothing good comes out of wanting vengeance.”

“You thought he had killed me,” Damian said, slowly.

Bruce nodded. “I was so angry,” he murmured. When he closed his eyes he couldn’t open them for a while. Damian shook his shoulders again.

“Don’t go to sleep,” he was saying.

Bruce opened his eyes again. Damian was crouched next to him, still hugging his knees. He was probably cold.

“Come here,” Bruce said quietly, and Damian sidled closer. Bruce covered him with his cape. Covered the both of them. He was shivering too, from the blood loss.

“What happened at the Dreyfus?” he asked. He needed to know before he blacked out again.

Damian sniffled. “He killed them. Before I could even do anything, he killed everyone. I couldn’t save them.”

“Did anyone see you?”

Damian shook his head. “I was in the vents.”

Bruce sighed, tipping his head back until it hit the wall with a soft thunk sound. Good. That was good  
.  
“The blood?” he asked.

“Some waiter’s,” Damian said, looking down at his suit. “I tried to– I tried to give him CPR, but he was just bleeding so much and I– I couldn't– I couldn't–” his voice cracked, and he looked away again. But his shoulders were shaking.

Bruce watched him. His throat was tight.

“You must think me weak,” Damian said, once he’d got his voice back under control.

“I don’t think that at all,” Bruce said, low.

“I couldn’t even protect you. What kind of a Robin am I, if I couldn’t even–”

“A good one. A strong one. You did what I told you to do, which was to run. To keep yourself alive. You don’t ever have to kill for me, Damian. Not ever, do you hear me?”

Damian broke then, his face crumpling. “I can't– how could I– you left me!”

“Oh, baby,” Bruce said, holding out his arms, and Damian clung to him, pressing his face to Bruce’s chest. He was still sobbing, his breath coming in wet gasps and hiccups.

“I didn’t know what to do,” Damian sobbed, “I didn’t know.”

“I know,” Bruce said, “I know.”

“You tell me one thing, and mo–mother tells me another,” Damian gasped, his eyes shut tight against Bruce’s neck, “I was so confused.”

“I know,” Bruce said again, rubbing his son’s back, “it’s alright. It’s going to be alright, Damian.”

Damian sniffled.

“You do what you think is right,” Bruce whispered, “that’s the only thing we can hope to do. The right thing.”

“I thought killing Bloodfly would be the right thing. Blood for blood.” Damian said, his voice small.

Bruce cupped the back of Damian’s head, holding it against his chest. He was so little, still. Only a boy.

“Maybe so,” Bruce said, “but perhaps then in doing that, something would happen to you, and then one of your brothers would try to avenge you– maybe Dick, and he would die trying, and then Jason would try to avenge him. And then Tim would avenge all of you, and then I’d be left with no sons and an empty house.  
It doesn’t end, Damian. It’s a cycle, a wheel that spins and spins and never stops.”

Damian was quiet. “Where is he?” he asked.

“The commissioner brought him in after I called. He isn’t dead. He was Carmine’s brother-in-law,” Bruce said. “Frankie Viti.”

Damian looked up. “Why would he do it, then? Kill all his family?”

The Hall was deathly quiet. Above them, in The Lament of Icarus, naiads wept as they clutched at Icarus’ cold, dead body.

“He wanted revenge too,” Bruce said, quietly.

 

When Dick and Jason found them, Bruce was unconscious again, and Damian sat next to his father, wrapped in his cape. The two of them were sitting huddled under the painting,

Jason knelt next to Bruce, and saw all the blood. “Who did this,” he said, and his voice was dripping with icy rage.

Damian looked at him, his large brown eyes calm.  
“It doesn’t matter now,” he said, “Let’s take him home.”

*

It was New Year’s Eve. Bruce watched the snow fall outside, under the setting sun. He turned away from the windows, and looked on at the belated festivities with a smile.

Tim was stringing up lights on their Christmas tree, even though Christmas had come and gone. He’d been in the hospital during, and Damian had been missing, and everyone had had other things on their minds.

He watched now, as Steph stood at the base of the tree, critiquing Tim’s ornament placement methods.  
“You do it yourself, then,” Tim said, scowling. Steph rolled her eyes.

Cass was watching from the sofa, sitting cross-legged and eating Pringles as she laughed occasionally at Jason’s jokes while he attempted to put up wreaths in places too high for him to reach. Duke was helping Damian with the tinsel.

Specifically– they were competing to see who could throw it high enough that it would loop perfectly onto the chandelier. Both of them were failing at it.

Dick stood in the centre of the living room, holding a clipboard and crossing off things. He was the ‘festivities manager’— a title he’d given himself.

Mostly everyone was ignoring him.

Alfred came in cookies and milk, and everyone promptly stopped doing their assigned tasks and went for the food, much to Dick’s dismay.

Bruce smiled again.

In his hands, he held a package. It was a print of the Lament of Icarus, scaled down and framed and wrapped neatly. He held it carefully.

“Alfred,” he said, “I’m going out for a bit. I’ll be back before next year.”

Steph groaned at his joke, a whole cookie stuffed in her mouth.

“Where are you going?” Duke asked, curious.

Bruce looked down at the package. “Just to give a  
gift to an old friend,” he said.

He turned and left out of the long corridor, wrapping his scarf around his neck.

Damian caught up to him in the foyer. “Take me with you,” he said.

“Why?” Bruce asked, frowning.

“Because Duke is boring me to tears, Father. This whole Christmas ordeal is grating on my nerves. It isn’t even Christmas.” Damian said, petulant.

Bruce studied him. He thought that perhaps it was something more than that. Ever since the Dreyfus and Bloodfly, Damian had grown… apprehensive of being away from Bruce for long.

Bruce looked back down at the package. “I think,” he said, carefully, “it’s a visit I’m going to have to make alone.”

Damian looked at him for a moment, and then realization glinted in his eyes. “You’re going to see Selina,” he said.

“I’m just going to check up on her,” Bruce said, putting his coat on.

“After what she did?”

Bruce wasn’t sure if Damian was talking about the murder or the other matter at hand. He wondered what in Damian’s opinion was worse.

“Yes,” Bruce said.

Damian shook his head, looking exasperated. “I don’t believe you,” he said.

“You’ll understand when you’re older,” Bruce said.

“Don’t patronise me, Father,” Damian said. “I’m coming with you. You’ll need all the help you can get.”

“Alright,” Bruce said.

Damian blinked, surprised. “Really?”

Bruce shrugged. “Yes. She likes you,” he gave a small half-smile. “And in case things don’t go my way, I need someone to protect me, don’t I?”

It took a while for Damian to realize that he was joking, and then he smiled back, hesitantly. “Yes,” he decided, “yes you do. I’ll get my coat. Don’t go anywhere.”

Bruce watched as he ran off, back towards the Hall. He came back wearing his orange down coat, and went to open the door.

“Don’t forget your hat,” Bruce said, picking it off the foyer table and handing it to Damian.

Damian put it on hurriedly, and slipped on his boots. “What,” he said, when he saw Bruce looking at him.

“Nothing,” Bruce said, with a smile. “You look sort of like a beach ball, is all.”

“Fa-ther!” Damian cried, and Bruce laughed and took hold of his son’s hand. He opened the door and they went out into the snow and cold, and onto the road that stretched out ahead of them.

 

Fin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title is from the greek tragedy Agamemnon. The monologue is short enough that I've included it down below. Thank you for reading!
> 
> Revenge begets revenge,  
> Truth spins and evaporates  
> As blood drains from the head.  
> It is the law of Zeus:  
> A life for a life.  
> What is human life worth?  
> More than itself, more than a life,  
> Or less? Or precisely the same?  
> The law of Zeus demands  
> A life for a life.  
> All – for all.  
> But this law of Zeus  
> Is a kind of disease  
> Inherited through the blood.  
> See how it has crazed  
> Every member of this house.
> 
> Aeschylus from Agamemnon (translated by Ted Hughes)


	10. Car keys

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me? Writing again?? Surely it must be an April Fools joke!

Dick came home a week and a half before Christmas, carrying enough gifts with him to feed and clothe all of Gotham penitentiary, and a few orphanages to boot. He insisted that Bruce open one every day, and afterwards they would go looking for trees, or Christmas parties, or to a wreath making class, or learn how to make gingerbread houses.

Once they even went ice fishing. Dick caught a walleye– a ten pounder. Bruce caught nothing. 

After their assorted Christmas themed activities, they would come home and Dick would make him open another present. Then it was a joyful long dinner, with pot roast and cranberry sauce and jellied consomme and roast beef with Yorkshire pudding and eggnog. 

And then Dick would make him watch Christmas movies with him until long past midnight, and then Bruce would have to insist he had to go to bed, because they had a long day of opening presents and competitive skiing and glazed shrimp scampi ahead of them the next day.  

 

He lay in bed and stared at the ceiling. It was not easy to sleep, most nights. Dick had firmly told him that he was not to be patrolling around Christmas time this year. Kate would handle it. He sighed, turning over.

The house was quiet, save for the muted sounds of the TV from the downstairs lounge, where, no doubt Dick had fallen asleep without switching off the system.  

He got up a few minutes later, scrubbing at his face. Sleep would not be coming to him tonight. Tomorrow was Christmas Day. Perhaps it was why Dick had been extra enthusiastic in his gift giving attempts. He’d given Bruce a set of jade cufflinks, and a five hundred dollar espresso machine.

When he saw Bruce staring at him, Dick grinned. “I made the down payment a week ago, and I'll have paid the rest off by February.”

When Bruce shook his head, he saw Dick's face fall a little. “You don't like it?” Dick said.  

Bruce studied the espresso machine, trying to think of the best way to put it.

“I do like it,” he said finally. “But you need to stop trying so hard.”

There was a silence for a while. An unspoken weight.  

“You're not trying at all,” Dick said, his eyes on his shoes. His voice was quiet.

“I don't–”

“Can we– can we talk for a sec, Bruce?”

Bruce shoved his hands in his pockets. He didn't want to do that. “We're talking now,” he said.

“It's like, it's like you don't even  _ want _ to move on!” Dick said, his hands up in the air, “after what happened to– what happened, you don't think I gotta live with that too? That I don't stay up nights thinking about how I could have done things differently and maybe, and maybe he wouldn't have–” Dick stopped talking, and went quiet. He was still look at his shoes, only now his jaw was clenched hard.  

Bruce realized with a start that Dick was trying not to cry.  

“Dick,” he started, “I'm–”

Dick was shaking his head. “You just want to  _ die _ ,” he was saying. He swiped at his cheek with the back of his hand, an abrupt, embarrassed gesture, “you don't even care.”

“That's not true.”

“It is,” Dick said, his voice low, “it is.”

Bruce looked away. “Dick, we don't have to talk about this now.”

Dick said nothing. “You mean, you don't  _ want _ to talk about it,” he said.  

“No, I mean this is Christmas Eve and I don't want to ruin it for everyone,” Bruce said, quietly.  

Dick laughed a little. “Who's everyone, Bruce? Kate? Selina? Clark? No one's here. No one's coming to see you because you don't return their calls. You don't talk to them.”

“Let's talk about this later.”

“And I  _ know  _ you  _ still _ haven't been going to work regularly, because Alfred called me up last month and told me. So all you do is sit at home or go to patrol, pretty much, huh?”

“Dick,” Bruce said.

“You act like this is all your fault and guess what, B. You're not that special. It was just a random, horrific thing that happened, and it's not all on you, you goddamn–”

“Dick!” Bruce snapped.

Dick fell silent. Through the windows across from them, Bruce could see the snow fall. It was going to be a white Christmas.

He sighed. His skin felt too tight on his face. “I'm sorry,” he said.  

Dick nodded stiffly. “Me too,” he said, after a while. 

And that had been that. An hour later, Dick was back to normal, forcing Bruce to go to the the Neimann-Bauer annual Christmas Eve benefit, and making sure that he wore his new jade cufflinks and drank coffee out of the new espresso machine. After the benefit, they drove home in the Bentley while Dick talked his ear off about the new Radiohead album or something like that.

Then they came home, and went to bed. Or tried, in Bruce's case.  

He walked over to a window and looked outside. It had stopped snowing, at last. Tomorrow morning would be beautiful. A dreamscape, something out of a surreal painting. The whole lawn of Wayne Manor swathed in white.  

He pressed his forehead against the glass. Closed his eyes. 

 

*

 

Bruce drove to the cemetery.

He couldn't explain why he did it, especially in the dead of the night, and just after it had snowed, too. He just felt as if he had to. His mother had always told him it was impolite not to wish family members Merry Christmas. Even ones that lived far away. You were supposed to call. It was the right thing to do. In the morning, he was going to apologize to Dick. Make things good with him. He just wanted to wish Jason first.  

He got out of the car, turning up the collar of his overcoat. It was deathly cold. The cemetery was far from the manor, situated in Gotham proper. It had been near Jason and his mother's house, back when they had still lived there.  

At the time, he had felt that Jason would want to be buried next to his mother.

He walked along the neat row of graves, his hands in the pockets of his overcoat. His breath came out in puffs of mist. Jason's grave was in the third row. He stood in front of it, coming to a stop.

“Hi,” he said. Then he cleared his throat, because his voice had come out all rough and strange.  

“Hi,” he said again. “Merry Christmas.” He paused again, unsure of what to say.  There was a long silence. “Alfred made plum cake again, Jay. It was perfect. You would have loved it.” He looked away.  This had truly been one of his more idiotic ideas, driving down here through the snow and the iced up roads in the middle of the night, to talk to a rock about a cake.  

He clenched his jaw. “Maybe it's stupid, talking like this. I don't know where you really are. Maybe you're nowhere at all. I don't know what– what I believe.”

Jason wasn't in heaven, he thought. He wasn't in hell either, or anywhere in between. He wasn't six feet underground, listening to Bruce as he talked. Jason just…  _ wasn't _ .  

And yet something strange in Bruce's chest kept him talking. Kept him from acknowledging the horrible decision that this had been, and driving back to his house and getting back into his warm bed.  

He brushed away some of the snow from the gravestone, idly. “I'm sorry,” he said, “you know I'm not good with words.” He realized that he'd forgotten to wear gloves. His hands would be numb soon. Right now they were just cold.

“That was always Dick's strong suit,” he continued, in a low voice. “Words, I mean. He always knows the right thing to say.”

“He's been trying really hard this Christmas. To forget, I suppose. He needs that,” Bruce said, “I owe him that.”

A wind had started to pick up, and he could hear a faint rustling coming from somewhere. Possibly just a rat. “He said something to me today. He said that I just wanted to die, now that you're gone.”

Bruce furrowed his brow, “It's true,” he said, “isn't it? I don't think I knew it myself.” He shrugged. 

“Wouldn't be so bad,” he said, thinking. “Dick could handle things in place of me, in Gotham. I trust him. And everyone else would just carry on, I suppose. And I'd be with you. No one would mind too much, I think. Clark or Selina or any of the others.”

He looked at the gravestone, frowning. “People move on,” he said.  Other people, he thought. It was a thing they did. Moved on.

If Jason was here he's have done an elaborate snort.  _ Apparently not you, you emotionally repressed asshole, _ he'd have said, or something as equally sardonic.

“No,” Bruce said lightly, “not me.” He touched the freezing edge of the gravestone again, with light fingers. “In my defense, it's only been three months. And I did love you so much,” he said quietly. “I didn't say that enough, how much I loved you. I'm so scared that you died not knowing. I lie awake at night thinking about it. Did you know?”

The gravestone answered him with an expected silence, and Bruce almost half-smiled. He truly  _ had  _ gone insane. Asking questions to a grave.

He reached into his the pocket of his coat, and took out a pair of car keys. He knelt down, and placed it in front of the grave.

“Merry Christmas,” he said, smiling. “It's only a  Honda Odyssey, so don't get too ahead of yourself. I bought it almost six months ago. Wanted to surprise you for Christmas. I just thought, with you turning sixteen next year and all. You might've wanted me to start teaching you. That's all.”

He knelt there for a while, the snow soaking through his pants and the cold going straight to his knees. “That's all,” he said again, his voice low. “Just thought you might appreciate it. You could drive to school and back, and go out with that girl you wanted to ask to homecoming. Take her to the movies or something,” he smiled, “I know you think that I didn't know about her, but I overheard you talking to Dick about it. And she came to the funeral with her mom. She seemed like a very nice young lady.”

She'd cried a lot. An uncomfortable amount, and Bruce had had to look away. 

He hadn't felt much at the funeral at all. Only a faint sense of embarrassment at all the crying around him. Jason would have been amused.

He hadn't felt anything after that initial night in Ethiopia. And even that couldn't have been strictly classified as feeling, so much so as his mind just shutting down and focusing on getting the body home. He could barely even remember it now. A feeling like there was a stone in his stomach, something that got heavier and heavier as the days went by. At the funeral, while he watched everyone cry, in the kitchen, when he saw a half empty box of Reese's puffs. At conferences at work, when he could feel all the interns staring at him while Lucius talked about EPA regulations in their factories in Detroit. When he saw a pair of socks that one of the maids had mistakenly put into his drawer instead of Jason's.  

All along, the stone in his stomach was turning, solidifying, building on itself, layer by layer. Getting heavier and heavier. And he had foolishly believed that he was going to feel nothing forever.

It had only been the morning after the funeral, when he'd gotten into the shower before going to work that he'd just… stopped. He'd looked at the water swirling down the drain, and some strange, anomalous part of his brain had decided that it was time to snap. The stone had split open. Cracked in half. 

After that he had gone straight back to bed. And he hadn't gone to work for a week, until Alfred called Dick and made him come down to Gotham and talk to Bruce. That had been September.

This was now. His brain still felt snapped. Broken into several pieces, chunks of them floating aimlessly in cerebrospinal fluid, gray and useless. Shattered, was the right word. Shattered.  

The car keys lay in the snow. Bruce stared at them. A car. What a naive idiot he had been.

“I think he's having a breakdown or something,” he had heard Dick whisper into his phone, that morning that he'd driven down, a week after the funeral. He didn't care what Dick said. He didn't care about anything at all. He lay in bed, staring at a patch of wall. His son was dead. His son was  _ dead. _

“Bruce,” Dick had whispered when he'd hung up. He'd put a hand on his shoulder. “You have to get out of bed,” he said.  

Bruce had closed his eyes and pretended he was asleep.  

“Okay,” he said now, “okay. Bye, Jaybird.” He stood up, brushing the snow off his legs.  

Tomorrow morning he was going to smile when he opened his presents, and he was going to give Dick that picture of the two of them that he had had framed, of when Dick was very small and they had gone to the zoo the first time. And then he was going to give him the paperwork that said that Zitka officially belonged to Gotham Zoo now, and no longer the circus, which had stopped showcasing animals. Bruce had donated enough money to the zoo that they had had an enclosure made, with plenty of room for her. Another elephant was being shipped in from a zoo in Arkansas, so she wouldn't be alone. 

Because that was the last thing anyone wanted. To be alone. 

_ To new beginnings _ , he would say into Dick's collar, as they hugged, and then they would take a family photo with Alfred, without only three chairs instead of four, and that night they would eat a pot roast they wouldn't be able to finish because Alfred had used his old recipe that accounted for four people. And they would pretend not to notice and Alfred would pack the leftovers and the next morning Dick would go back to Bludhaven.  

And Bruce would just have to carry on, with his snapped brain and the shattered stone in his stomach, and he would wave goodbye as Dick pulled out from the driveway.  And then the rest of his unbearable life would go on and on forever until he was dead.

To new beginnings, indeed.

He gave the gravestone one last look. Then he walked off, towards the car. The car keys lay where he'd left them, in the snow.  

 

 


	11. Growing Pains

It only happened because Damian was curious.  

It was stupid, he knew. He just wanted a break from those stupid Judo drills Father kept making him do, so he'd snuck out of the cave, and wandered around the property, running and jumping through the wooded area a little ways from the West lawn. It even had a little stream, and Damian splashed about in it for a minute, chasing little silvery fish and tiny frogs, before he grew bored.  

After that, he went to the Manor garage. The garage was one of Damian's favourite places in the whole house. It was a huge shed, almost thirty metres long and about a quarter as wide, and it always smelled like engine oil.

It was where Father kept all his cars. He had almost twenty of them. He enjoyed collecting old ones, and tinkering with their engines, which Damian found strange. They were called _Vintages._

Father said that put together, they were almost as valuable as the Manor. And then he had said that Damian was to be very careful when he went there, and to not touch anything.  

So of course, Damian went there all the time. And he touched _everything._

He ran up to the red Ferrari, which he liked the most. Gingerly, he opened the door and got in, and sat inside. He put his hands on the steering wheel, and pretended he was driving down the highway, making car noises.

Then he flushed, looking around. He was acting like a child. He was _far_ from a child, at eleven and a half. If Drake saw him now, he would never let him live it down.

He jumped out of the car, running over to the end of the garage. There was a smaller shed pushed up against the very corner, and he looked at it curiously. It was tiny, practically a wooden closet. In his six months of living in the manor, he had managed to explore almost all parts of the property, but he'd never gone into this particular shed before. He hesitated for a second, and then he opened the door.  

Inside, there was a bicycle. He stared at it.  

It was painted a bright, sky blue. The colour of the sky, during the hot summers back at home. The spokes of the wheels were painted blue as well, as were the handles and the basket and the pedals. It looked like what Damian thought a painting of a bicycle would look like, much less an actual one.

He was frozen in place. It didn't belong to him. He shouldn't– he couldn't–

He slowly reached out to touch the handles. It couldn't be _that_ hard. _Anyone_ could ride a bicycle. Even Drake, who was arguably a little mentally challenged, knew how to do it. All he had to do was get on and… _pedal_. That was it.  

That would be it.  

 

*

 

Grandfather had always told him that he lacked focus.  He knew that sometimes they spoke about it, when they thought he was asleep.

“He's too much like his father,” he had heard Grandfather say once, his voice quiet and furious, “always asking questions. Always wanting answers. That boy needs to learn how to keep his head down and follow orders.”

Damian's eyes had been closed. He was lying in bed, his body weary and drained from a long day of training. He had foolishly asked Grandfather if he could take a few hours off to go and see the fair in the nearest village by the compound. 

Grandfather had said no. Damian had been furious, and he'd raged on and on about how he was already a better warrior than most of the apprentices Grandfather kept, and wasn't he less than half their age? He didn't need any more of this training, and certainly not from an old man like his Grandfather and–

Grandfather had slapped him.

He remembered freezing in shock. Mother had _never_ touched him. It was– it was _wrong._ He stared wordlessly at Mother, waiting for her to do something. But she had only looked away.  

“Make sure he listens,” Grandfather said, when they were outside his chambers.

Mother had been quiet. “Yes, Father,” she said at last. It was strange, how mother let no one order her around but Grandfather. Damian realized with a start that perhaps– perhaps she was _scared_ of him. The idea troubled him. Mother wasn't _supposed_ to get scared.  

After he had left, Mother had come into his chambers and sat on the bed, next to him. She had stroked his head, while he pretended not to sniffle.

“Shhh,” she said gathering him up in her arms. Her threw his arms around her, burying his face into the crook of her neck. He had only been five then, and such foolish things had been tolerated because he was so little.

“I'm sorry,” he said, his voice small.  

“Don't be, habibi,” she said. Her voice was sad. “It's just the way things are. You are a soldier first. A grandson second. At least, as long as you live here,” she said. There had been a strange edge to her voice, when she had said that.  

“Where else would I live?” he asked curiously, climbing onto his mother's lap. She smelled like Jasmine and tea leaves. He inhaled, closing his eyes.

Mother stroked his cheek. The one that Grandfather had struck. “Don't worry about that now,” she said, her voice soft. She smiled at him. “I'll tell the stable boy to sneak you to the fair tomorrow evening, when your Grandfather is at his meetings. He'll never know.”

Damian grinned back. “And I can skip training?”

She only laughed and kissed his forehead. “Don’t push it. Go back to sleep,” she whispered.

The next day, the fair in the village had been set on fire. He and Mother watched from the high windows of the compound's main hall. An example had been made. Mother's hand was gripping his shoulder very tight. He looked up at her.

He had thought then, for some strange reason, that Mother would say something. Tell Grandfather that he had gone too far. That it wasn't just. He was only a boy. He should have been allowed to have his fun.

All Mother did was stare at the flames. There was something in her eyes, some inscrutable thing that Damian could not recognize.

“From today,” she said finally, her voice as hard as iron, “you are _never_ going to raise your voice against your Grandfather. Or any superior. Your pleasure is secondary. All that matters are the orders you have been given. Is that clear?”

Damian had nodded, mutely. He remembered, after that. He would keep head down. It didn't matter what he wanted. He was a soldier first. A son second.  

It was only later that he realised that the strange thing in his Mother's eyes had been fear.  

 

*

 

He was lying on the floor of the garage, his breath coming in fast little gasps. There was a shooting pain in his wrist. When he looked down at it, he saw that it was at an odd angle. It hurt so badly it was making his eyes wet. He wiped at them, embarrassed.  

The _bicycle_ , he thought suddenly, and for a second he stopped breathing altogether. It was as though time had stopped. Father was going to _kill him._  

He sat up a little, clutching his wrist, looking for where the bicycle had skidded to, when he'd fallen. When he saw it, he let out a helpless exhale.  

The bicycle was all crushed up, the metal bent, the sky blue paint chipped off in several places. But that wasn't the worst of it. It had skidded into one of Father's cars. The red Ferrari.  

Damian looked at the massive dent on the side of the car, his eyes wide. He was going to die. He was going to _die._ He wasn't supposed to be here at _all_. He was supposed to be practicing Judo drills in the cave, and doing his French homework when that was done, and now Father would– he _would–_

He squeezed his eyes shut, and lay back on the floor. He inhaled shakily, trying to beat back the swell of sharp, hot panic that was rising in his chest.

All he could remember was what Grandfather had done every time he'd tried to sneak out of the compound, or the way the men would watch silently as Damian was pushed into the pits, as a child.  

“He's too little,” one of them had said, once, “I can't fight him.”

He could remember the silence there had been in the room, after he had said that. Everyone had looked at his Grandfather. Even the man. His face had been pale.

Damian started to cry. He couldn't help it. His wrist hurt and his chest felt tight and he had ruined both the bicycle and Father's car and he couldn't _breathe and–_

“Damian?” he heard. It was Father. He had come into the garage. There were soft footsteps coming his way.

Damian whimpered, turning away so that Father couldn't see his wrist. He didn't know what to do. He didn't _know_.  

“Damian?” Father said again. The footsteps stopped. Father was seeing the damage now. He was seeing the car and the bike and Damian lying on his side and he was going to so _so_ angry. He heard the footsteps again. Father had broken into a run. He turned his face onto the cool cement on the floor of the garage, screwing his eyes shut. No, he thought. No no no _no._

When Father touched him, he flinched so hard that Father reared back.  

“I'm sorry,” he was crying, his shoulders shaking. He was a coward, was what he was. He ought to have been facing his Father with dignity, ought to have looked him square in the eye and apologised. Grandfather had always said that crying was for the weak.

“I'm sorry,” he said again, sobbing. Father was only staring at him, his eyes wide, “I didn't– I didn't mean to. I'll fix it, Father I can fix it, just please don't–” he was babbling, and he knew it. Saying anything that would keep Father from hitting him.

“Damian, I'm going to–” Father said, reaching over to touch him, and he flinched again, shaking his head. He tried to stand up, face his father like a man, but he overbalanced and landed on his wrist and he started to gasp again. It was like he couldn't breathe. He was still crying,of course– like– like some kind of insane, hysterical _child_. It was like he had lost all control of his body.  

Father moved closer to him, crouching before Damian, not touching him until he had quieted down. “What happened?” he said, his voice very quiet. Like he was calming a horse.  

Damian's shoulders shook. “I don't know,” he sobbed. “I don't know.”

He was still cradling his wrist. When Father saw, he made a quiet sound, cupping it gently in his hands. Damian watched him, warily. It was strange. Father didn't _seem_ angry. He looked… worried.  

“That's broken,” Father said, his voice still doing that quiet thing, “we need to get you inside so I can set it. I'm going to pick you up, okay?”

Damian started to breathe faster again. “I– I don't–”

“Okay,” Father said quickly, “I'm not picking you up. Can you walk?”

Damian was trembling all over. Just shaking. It wasn't like it was cold.  “I just–” he stopped, swallowing. His mouth was bone dry. “Can we just sit here, for a while,” he whispered, his voice small.  

Father studied him. “Alright,” was all he said.

They sat there, by the wreck of the bike. Damian kept his eyes trained on the floor. He could feel Father staring at him.  His wrist hurt so much.

“You're not– angry?” Damian said, finally. He was still looking at the floor.  

“What for?” Father said.

Damian sniffled, wiping at his eyes with his good hand. “You didn't see it?” he whispered. “The car? It's right here.” 

Father took a handkerchief out of his pocket and started wiping at Damian's face, his touch feather-light. “I saw it,” he said, “I'm not angry, Damian.” 

Damian stared up at Father. “Why not?” 

Father stood up, helping Damian up. His hand was warm on Damian's back.

“The car is replaceable,” he said, his voice low, “you are not.”

 

*

 

Inside the manor, Damian watched Father as he set his wrist. He was sitting on one of the high graphite counters in the kitchen, and even then, Father was taller than him.

“This next part is going to hurt,” Father said, “I'm going to have to wrap it up very tightly.”

“Oh,” Damian said. He felt drained. First the fall, then the crying, and now that he was in the aftermath of it all, the shame had started to set in. He had completely lost it, and right in front of Father too. He had behaved like a stupid, emotional baby, not at all like the _warrior_ he had been trained to be, and now Father was disappointed in him.

He hadn't yelled, not yet, but he could tell that something was wrong. Father was being very quiet. Even quieter than he usually was.

Father started wrapping bandages around the splint, his hands working deftly. Damian inhaled a little sharply when the splint dug into his flesh, once or twice. He was not going to cry out. He wasn't. He had already done enough damage.  

Father glanced up at him, briefly. “You know,” he said, “when I was about your age, I would hurt myself while playing all the time. Alfred would sit me down on this very same counter, and he'd give me a spoonful of sugar to put in my mouth while he was dressing my cuts and scrapes, to make me feel better.” 

Damian just looked at Father. He couldn't understand what he was trying to say.  

“Behind you,” Father said, still wrapping bandages, “third rack.” 

Damian looked. There was a little jar of sugar on the rack. The one Alfred used to sweeten their tea.  Damian looked at Father. 

“Go on,” Father said. 

Damian unscrewed the jar slowly, and put a spoonful into his mouth.  

“Better?” Father asked.   

The inside of his mouth felt oversweet, and he still felt the last dregs of panic and shame in his chest. But Father's mouth had curled up just a little while watching him eat the sugar, and his hands were still cupping Damian's wrist, even though it had already been set, and he still didn't look like he was angry, not at all, not even a little bit. 

“Yes,” Damian whispered. He meant it.  

“Good,” Father said. 

After that Father started cleaning the rest of his cuts and scrapes. Damian hadn't even noticed, but he'd skinned his knee badly. He'd tracked blood all the way to the kitchen. He watched now, as Father crouched down and painted the cut with iodine.

He cleared his throat. Now was the time. “Father,” he said, hesitating briefly, “I…apologise. I– I shouldn't have been in the garage at all. I was supposed to be doing my drills. I just saw the bicycle and–” he bowed his head, trying not to fidget. A good warrior must have perfect form, Mother had always said. Perfect in mind, and in body.

Grandfather had always said that as well.

“It will not happen again,” Damian said, “You have my word.”

Father offered no comment for some time. He was still cleaning up Damian's cuts. He carefully put a bandaid on top of his skinned knee, his brow furrowed intently.  

“Damian,” Father said finally, his eyes still on his knee, “do you not know how to ride a bicycle?”

Damian shook his head. “I never was– it didn't seem important. Learning to ride a bicycle was inessential to my training.” Damian said. A pause. He fidgeted a little, before he remembered what Mother used to say and stopped himself.  

“Also,” he said, his voice quiet, “no one ever taught me.” 

Father looked up at him. He was still crouching down, his head level with Damian's knee. He tried to think of Grandfather, or even Mother dressing his cuts like this. He couldn't imagine it.  In the compound, it was always the servants who bandaged his wounds.

But then Father often did servant work. He made his own bed, and would make tea for Pennyworth in the mornings. He went grocery shopping occasionally. Once he had taken Damian. It had been strange. But not… unpleasant. Father had bought him a pack of marshmallow flavoured chewing gum for a dollar, and they had split it on the way back home. It had not been unpleasant in the slightest.   

Father was still looking. “I see,” he said, after a bit. “Well, rest up. Once your wrist is better, we'll see about buying a new bike.”

“What?”

Father stood up again. “A bike. Don't you want to learn how to ride one?”

Damian swallowed, trying to speak through the lump in his throat, “Why are you– why are you doing this?”

Father tilted his head. “Because you don't know how to ride a bike yet, and you're already eleven. I'm your dad. It's my job to teach you.” 

Damian blinked. “That's not what I meant,” he said, “I meant– why aren't you angry? I _ruined_ your car. I lost control of my emotions. I– I cried like a _baby.”_  

Father looked thoughtful. Then he leant on the counter, next to Damian. They were close enough that their shoulders were touching.  

“When I was your age,” Father said, “not a day went by when I didn't lose control of my emotions. My parents had died very recently and I hadn't… I'm afraid I hadn't taken it very well. I was… a difficult child, Damian. I can't say I made things very easy for Alfred.” 

Damian stared. It was hard to imagine Father being anything other than calm and in control. 

“I can't speak for Alfred,” Father was saying, “but I know that if I had been in his position, it would have been infinitely more terrifying to raise a child that buried everything he felt deep inside him, rather than one that happened to let himself feel things.” 

When Damian was silent, Father only smiled. “It's alright,” he said, “All you need to worry about right now, is if you want me to teach you how to ride a bike or not.”

“I– yes,” he managed. “Yes, I do.” Then he looked away. This was some strange and fantastical world that he had dreamt up. He was sure of it. 

“Alright, we'll start as soon as your wrist is better.” 

Damian nodded, mutely.   

There was a hand on his chin, all of a sudden, tipping it up. Damian looked up. Father's eyes were warm. “There's another thing Alfred always did, when I got hurt,” he said.  

“What?” Damian asked.   

Father pulled him close, until his head was resting on his chest. He was cradling the back of Damian's head with his hand. He was hugging him, Damian realised. This was a _hug._ There they were, sitting on a granite counter in the kitchen, Damian with a broken wrist and a mouthful of sugar, and Father, with his iodine stained fingers. They were _hugging_. 

Damian wrapped his good hand around his father's neck. Tight.

 _I love you_ , he wanted to say. _I love you I love you I love you. So much more than I ever loved Grandfather._  

“Let's start tomorrow,” he mumbled into Father's shirt collar, instead.   

Father laughed softly. “Maybe in a few weeks. If you don't rest, you won't heal.”

  


*

 

They walked down the mile long driveway slowly, Damian pushing the bicycle with him as they went along.

It was new, and it was bright green. It had a basket and a bell and gears and a little cup holder.   

Damian loved it. 

“You're going to hold on, right?” Damian asked, flexing his wrist. They'd only just got the cast removed yesterday. Six weeks of waiting. Of staring at the new bicycle ever since the day Father had gone to the store with him, and they had picked it out together. 

“Yes,” Father said. “Come on, get on the seat.” 

Damian hesitated, and then climbed on. He was not a coward. Grandfather had always said– Damian pushed the thought away. It didn't matter, what Grandfather had always said.  

Father was holding one of the handles with him. He looked patient. Like he had all the time in the world. 

“We could go tomorrow,” Damian had said yesterday, in the Batcave, “after I get the cast removed.” 

Father was looking at something on the main monitors, his cowl pushed back. He looked exhausted. He'd been off-world for a week, and he'd only just come home. He was going through reports to help Drake with some case.   

Father was scrubbing at his face. “I have meetings all day tomorrow,” he'd said, “and you have history lessons with Mr. Alvarez. Maybe Thursday, Damian.” 

“Oh,” Damian had said. “Alright, Father.” and then he'd gone back upstairs to finish working on his Biology assignment. Around dinnertime, instead of Alfred calling him downstairs, Father had come to his room, and sat on the bed. He'd watched Damian drawing anatomical diagrams for a minute.  

“You're good at that,” he'd said.  

Damian had blushed, setting down his pencil. 

“Maybe we can skip our prior engagements just this once,” he'd said, and laughed when Damian had jumped on him, wrapping his arms around him. 

Now, Damian exhaled. “Don't let go,” he said, one more time, as he began to pedal. 

The wheels began to spin as the bike went faster and faster, and soon Father had to jog in order to keep up with him. 

Damian could feel himself grinning. Father was grinning too. A proper, real smile, with teeth and all. 

“I'm doing it,” he said. He was laughing. He hadn't even realised it.

And then he was riding. Truly riding the bike. His heart soared as he rode down the driveway, watching the trees on either side blur into a band of greens and golds. The wind swept at his face and his hands and his magnificent green bike cut throughout the air like a well oiled, beautiful ship. He rang the bell, laughing at how good it felt, how excellent he was soon going to be at this, how he was going to go _everywhere_ on his bike, and he turned to tell Father, but Father wasn't by his side anymore.

He stopped a little clumsily, pressing the brakes. Father was standing at the far end of the driveway, a small figure, next to the large presence of the Manor. He had let go, and Damian hadn't even noticed.  

“I did it!” Damian yelled over to him. Even though they were far apart, he could see the smile on Father's face.  

He grinned, getting on his bike once again, and rode back towards him.

 

 


End file.
